Awakening
by ChiaraStorm
Summary: The daughter of the One. A newly unplugged hacker. Linked in ways they can't understand, together they uncover a secret that has been hidden for fifteen years.
1. Chapter I: Kesare

This is the result of an idea I've had for years. I first came up with the whole plot for this when I was thirteen, and though it's evolved a lot since then, this is really based on three years of work. And I still can't decide if I'm happy with parts of it. There's not pleasing some people…

A big thank you goes to **Bagpipes5K2**, who first read this over, and also for being a great person to talk to whenever I'm having a problem with writing. Thank you!

Anyway, I hope you like it, and please review!

**Disclaimer: **Well, if I owned any recognisable part of this, I'd be far to rich to entertain myself with fanfiction. You should all know that the Matrix trilogy, the Animatrix and any of the Matrix games are absolutely nothing to do with me apart from being one of my little obsessions (I use the term 'little' lightly).

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**Chapter I: Kesare**

Kes sat at the keyboard, watching the screen intently. The loose and frayed sweater she wore emphasised her sharp figure and the blue-grey colour showed how pale her skin was. The headset perched on her oval head gave her a look of determination and seriousness that came from both of her parents. Locks of dark silky hair fell into her chocolate brown eyes due to her choppy hairstyle, but she didn't seem like the sort of person who would care about that.

Her eyes followed the code, taking in the scrolling characters that ran down the dark green screen like rain. She'd been reading it her whole life, so it felt like a second language. However, the tiny little characters, layer upon layer of them, were only a tiny part of the Matrix. Kes was only following a minute portion of it. In fact, she was only following one person. Having read the code since she was a child, she could practically see the girl she was following in her mind, every detail of her expression written into the code. It always seemed just a little bizarre to her that a person could be defined in a few green characters, but years of reading the screens and seeing the world from a godlike perspective had shown her the code underlying the code, the world within the world.

Kes grew so absorbed in her work, reading, watching, occasionally tapping out a few characters on the keyboard, that when a hand was laid on her shoulder, she jumped visibly and violently.

"Scare you?" her father asked with a hint of a joke in his voice.

Kes gave him her most withering glare. "Don't, Dad" she said with a warning glance. "Or one of these days I'm going to start keeping a plasma gun under the console"

Neo smiled slightly. Even though everyone said Kes looked like a miniature him, he always saw plenty of Trinity in her. She had the same sharpness in her manner, but she was far more voluble.

"See anything interesting?" he asked, nodding towards the screen.

Kes shook her head. "Just the usual"

"The hacker?"

"Much the same" Kes shrugged. "I think we need to get her out soon though. She's a damn good hacker, but those traces are really invasive. It might not be long before the Agents notice"

Neo nodded slowly. "You should go tell Morpheus"

"I will, when my shift's over"

"It's done" Neo said firmly. "I'll take over"

"No, it's okay–"

"Kes, you've been here since dawn"

"How can you tell?"

"Kes–"

"Seriously, though, how can you tell it's dawn when you can't see the sun?"

"Kes–"

"Fine, fine" she said with a slight snappiness and irritability. She regretted it after the words has left her mouth though. She had perfect right to get annoyed with her parents; after all, she was fifteen. However, she was also a crew member, and she had to get on with them for the good of the ship. The best thing she could do was try to escape from them. It was kind of difficult when the ship only contained six people and there was barely enough living space for them when most of the ship was taken up with consoles and equipment for unplugging people. Was it any wonder that they had to unplug less and less people? It took too long to discover and unplug people, and most had to be dropped off at Zion to make more living space for new recruits. Because of that, there were only five permanent members of the crew; Morpheus, Neo, Trinity, Link and Kes. At the moment, they had one recruit with them – Elysia – but she was only there to get more experience in the Matrix. They only had space for one more, so they had to choose carefully. The hacker Kes had been watching, Kiana, was one of the best they had found in a while, and now Kes just had to convince Morpheus of that fact.

"See you later" she said, taking off the headset and handing them over to her father. "Where's Morpheus?"

"Probably in the med bay" Neo replied, regretting the fact that their conversation seemed to be over already. Neither he nor Trinity got to spend much time with Kes lately as their work in the Matrix got more and more demanding. Besides, Kes had recently become a little obsessed with her Operating duties and creating programs for the Construct, and she craved her independent time anyway. It felt bizarre to him, to think of losing Kes when it barely seemed two days ago that she was born.

Kes had no idea of what was going through her father's head. Instead, she just stood up, stretching her stiff limbs. She had lived for almost ten years on this ship, and the cold barely bothered her, but after sitting at a console for seven hours, she had earned the right to be stiff. She gave a small smile to her father as she left, her heavy boots tapping out an echoing rhythm along the metal grate. In the ship though, they didn't make any real noise. All the machines meant that something was always clanking.

Kes walked up to the med bay, instantly hearing Morpheus' quiet, controlled voice through the closed door. She was about to enter, when she started to properly listen to what he was saying.

"Trinity, we have to return. Commander Lock has ordered us to"

"And when have we ever jumped when he's called?" her mother replied in her quiet voice, straining with barely contained emotion.

"This is different. They think something is going wrong with the Matrix that we should know about"

Trinity made a noise between disbelief and annoyance. "They always think something is changing in the Matrix. They can't get their heads around the fact that Neo ended the war"

"Be that as it may, we still answer to Zion. We need to go back"

"You know how I feel about going back to Zion" Trinity's voice was clipped, but her words hung in the air like steel.

Kes could hear Morpheus sigh. "They won't take her away"

"How can we be sure?" Kes could picture her mother running her hand through her short hair. "Every time I've been to Zion it's got worse. When I joined the crew everyone stared because we were from the Neb. When we returned the first time with Neo everyone greeted him because he was the One. Now when we return with Kes they show their great fucking concern for her by trying to run tests on her and make her answer questions about the Matrix. As if she's the One herself"

"You can't deny she has great talent"

"That's because it's the only thing she can do while we're Inside" her mother retorted. "If we had all done nothing else for ten years we'd be as good as her too"

Kes now knew that she really shouldn't be listening. This was incredibly educational, and doing wonders for her ego, but she wasn't meant to be hearing this. Though, as a crewmember she had just as much right to know what was going to happen as anyone else. However, as a daughter, she was completely screwed if either of her parents found out. She knew that the sensible thing to do was walk away, but this conversation was compelling. She sighed, knowing that when someone saw her, she would be in a lot of trouble.

_It's worth it_, she rationalised.

"Morpheus, I don't want Kes going back into Zion" Trinity said firmly. "God knows it's hard enough for her already without getting pawed by a bunch of old council members who want to spread 'hope to the people'" Even several feet away Kes could hear her mother's sarcasm.

There was silence, and she could practically hear Morpheus thinking. Finally, he answered. "Fine. I'll ask Niobe to send us a report of what passes in the meeting" His voice was still calm and controlled, but Kes could tell he wasn't happy. "But Trinity, she will have to go back to Zion at some point. If we stay away forever, people will think that you and Neo are lost, or that Kes has died"

"Better that than them trying to test her and pump her pull of drugs to find out whether the 'One' is an extractable gene"

Kes didn't realise that her mother was storming out until the door was wrenched open. Trinity, blazing with the white-hot fury that always flared up when something threatened her family, stopped dead in her tracks when she saw Kes.

_I'm fucked_, Kes thought.

The best thing she could think to do was pretend that she had only just got there. "Hi Mom" she said breezily. "Is Morpheus in here? Dad said he might be"

Trinity's eyes narrowed slightly, and Kes knew that her mother was on the brink of deciding to believe her. Thankfully for her, she just nodded towards the door without a word. Kes nodded her own thanks, and then escaped in.

Morpheus looked up at her. In all the years Kes had known him, he hadn't changed that much. However, he smiled at her as soon as the door was closed, something which didn't happen too often.

"You heard every word of that" It wasn't a question.

Kes nodded sheepishly, thinking _damn, how does he know everything?_ "Sorry. I did actually come to ask you something"

She could tell he wasn't really angry, but his smile faded anyway. "What do you think?" he asked her.

She sighed, blowing her choppy fringe upwards. "I can't remember Zion properly, since we went back there when I was nine" There was only one word for that trip. Nightmare. "The main part I remember is being taken to the med bay and having all those weird tests run on me, and Mom and Dad going berserk to get me out. I was surprised they didn't boot us immediately onto the ship after what they did"

"So you don't want to go back"

"Bizarrely enough, no, I want to" she explained. "I'm fifteen, not nine. I don't think anyone on this ship would say I can't protect myself. Besides–" she began, trying to think of a way to phrase it so that it wouldn't offend him. "I think I need to see more of the world than just this ship. I need to get more of a perspective on stuff, you know? Not implying anything" she stressed. "It's just at the moment I probably know the Matrix better than Zion, and that's not a position I want to be in"

She wondered if she had made any sense, but Morpheus smiled his slight smile again. "It's surprising, that with such stoic parents as yours, you seem to be able to articulate well"

She raised one eyebrow. "I think if I was more like them, no-one around here would be able to talk to me"

Morpheus nodded slightly, not in assent, but just as a general way of drawing the conversation to some sort of a close.

"Anyway" Kes said. "I need to tell you about the hacker we've been watching, Kiana. I think she's ready to be unplugged"

"Why?"

"Well, she's been pushing the boundaries a lot. She's breaking just about every computer crime there's a name for in the Matrix, and today I sent her a couple of viruses and threatening messages, telling her to lay off the search for the Matrix"

"How did she respond?"

"Didn't, but only a couple of minutes later she was hacking another system. And she's getting better. I hacked the same system through the computers, and left her mines and bugs and ran a trace on her. She dismantled all of them before the trace could complete. She's good, she's fast and she isn't going to let anything stop her finding out about the Matrix. I think we should get to her now, before Agents notice"

Morpheus nodded. "It sounds like you've spent a long time watching her"

Kes shrugged. "Piss all else to do"

Morpheus met her gaze for a second, and she held it without fear. She had never been afraid of speaking her mind before him, but she never quite knew what he was thinking. He always managed to keep her guessing.

"If possible, we will go in tonight, before any Agents get onto her, as you say" he said finally.

Kes nodded. "Do you want me to Operate?"

"I'd like you and Link. The more backup we have, the better, and I think your parents feel safer knowing someone else is there with you"

Kes didn't resist the impulse to roll her eyes as she left. Now that her shift was over, she could either eat, sleep or find a computer and work on a program. She decided to do the former, followed by the last item. The days rolled into one after a while, and she only ever slept when she felt like it, regardless of day or night. Only something like an unplugging or a mission could break the monotony. It was sad, but Kes was actually really looking forward to tonight. Something like that would be a bit more of a challenge for her.

First, food. She was starving. She entered the mess hall, planning to plan out the next stage of her program as she ate, but her mother was in there, eating in silence.

Kes said nothing, but grabbed her tray of food, the only one she had ever known, and began to eat. Because there was absolutely no variance in flavours, she could eat it almost without thinking, her arm moving mechanically. The only thing that brought her out of her reverie was her mother's voice, and she knew from her tone that she had been watching her for a while now.

"You heard every word of mine and Morpheus' conversation, didn't you?" Trinity asked in her cool, distant way.

Kes looked up. "I have no idea what you're talking about"

"Kes–"

"Okay, yes" she said, hating herself for the fact that she gave into her parents easily. "Sorry"

Her mother sighed, sounding absolutely exhausted. Kes suddenly got the feeling that she didn't want to have to justify herself to her fifteen year old daughter.

"Sorry for what? Eavesdropping or lying about it?"

Kes mock-winced. "Careful Mom, you're going to cut me with a tongue as sharp as that"

"Don't get smart"

"How am I getting smart?"

Trinity sighed. People had told her time and time again that they were way too alike, and she hated it. All the things that she hated about herself she saw reborn in her daughter, along with a sharper breed of irony and sarcasm that just emphasised their similarities.

Kes rolled her eyes again – one of her many habits. "So basically I'm never going into Zion again. Scratch that, I'm never going out of your sight again, is that right?"

"Don't be ridiculous"

"How am I being ridiculous? I'm genuinely asking" Kes cried. "Look, if people find hope in my presence, so be it. It just proves that they don't know me"

Link walked in, saw the argument brewing like a storm cloud in the air and walked straight back out.

"I'm just trying to protect you"

"Mom, I'm fifteen. I don't need protecting"

"I don't trust Zion to leave you alone"

"I'm perfectly old enough to tell them to piss off"

"Kesare, language"

"Oh, full names, I'm scared" Kes snapped back. "Besides, if you're allowed to swear, then you've got to let me"

"That's different"

"Oh really? Cause sometimes it feels like no-one can think of me as a crewmate over your daughter"

"What does that mean?"

"It means that no-one here is prepared to treat me like an adult. If I'm pulling my weight in the crew, then why can't people actually treat me like a crewmember?"

"What are you going to do, change your parentage?"

"Mother–" The word left Kes' tongue with more sarcasm than the whole of the conversation squashed together. "I'd like to apply for a transfer"

Trinity glanced at her daughter like she was only seeing her properly for the first time. "Why?"

Kes shrugged. "Feel like it"

"Oh, because that's a good reason to do anything"

"A good reason is because I'm sick of being treated differently just because I'm the daughter of the closest thing Zion has to celebrities, so I want to try my luck somewhere else"

"Well, tough. You have to be eighteen"

"Niobe said she'd take me on as an Operator. Besides, I'm good enough for any of the ships"

"And you think they'd accept you under-age on the strength of that? The only reason any of the ships would accept you at fifteen would be because of the fact that you're the daughter of the One"

Kes rolled her eyes. "You know, I don't even know why I bothered trying to talk to you. I'm sick of this. You are never going to change"

With that, she stood up, abandoning her food, and stormed out of the room, her boots clanking angrily on the floor, as though she were punishing it for her anger. Trinity sighed, pushing her own food away. She didn't know what it was about Kes that always managed to make her lose control. Maybe it was because she felt a compulsion to protect her, maybe it was because she was so similar to her, maybe it was because she was just an aggravating teenager, she didn't know.

_No_, she thought to herself. _I do know why. It's because she looks so much like Neo, and I've come so close to losing him many times. I can only take comfort in the fact that he can protect himself. Kes can't. I need to protect her._

But then, maybe Kes was right. Maybe it was time for her to go out, explore the world a little more…

_Over my dead body_ a sarky voice said from the back of her head.

Trinity smiled sadly, and then left the room. She needed to go and have a talk with her daughter. She headed towards Kes' room, guessing that that was where she would be. She was there, curled up on the bed in a cat-like position. Trinity didn't have the heart to disturb her, so she just left silently, vowing to come back later and straighten it all out.

Kes listened as the door of her cabin opened and shut. When she was sure it was firmly closed, she flipped onto her back and stared at the ceiling, her dark brown eyes emotional and fixed.

_I'm trapped. Help me, God, someone help me…_

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Okay, well that's Kes. I can't decided whether I like this chapter or not, but I really do like Kes, and the aim of this chapter was really just to introduce Kes and her relationships with everyone. I didn't want a fic where she'd be happy with everything, I think that after fifteen years, she'd be itching to explore a bit, and get out of her parent's protection. I can relate…

I hope you all enjoyed it, and please review!


	2. Chapter II: Kiana

**Rhiannon Reeves** – I'm so glad you like it. I never really pictured Kes and Trinity getting on, as they're both pretty headstrong. Thanks for reviewing!

**Sydney Andrews** – Do you know what, your review really made my day. Your compliments made me blush! I love the name Kes, at one point it was Kyra, which I never liked as much (I have no idea why I went for names starting with K, but I found some quite cool ones). If you want to swap plots, make sure we're not doing the same thing, feel free to email me, it's in my profile. Thanks for reviewing, and I can't wait to read your story!

**scarstar **– Aw, thanks! I'm so sorry, I haven't emailed you in forever, I'm so lazy! I hope you had a good Christmas, can't wait to see your Dublin photos. There's a few half-decent 'daughter of the One' fics, but they're a bit few and far between. There are a few in my favourite stories, but I think this one's a bit different (I hope!) Thanks for reviewing! (hugs)

**Bagpipes5K2** – Oh, yummy cookies! And with sprinkles? This day just keeps getting better (hugs) I was going to send you this chapter to read over, but I sort of ran out of time. I'll send you the next one soon, promise! And I will get off my arse and get on with Simulation one day...Thanks for reviewing!

I was going to update on Thursday, but I got such nice reviews I thought I'd update specially. As such though, I didn't get it checked because I decided to do it impulsively and so I didn't have time to send it to my beta, the amazing **Bagpipes5K2** (go check out her fic, Souls in Winter, it's incredible!). So if there are any mistakes or parts don't make sense, can someone point them out to me please, so I can fix them? Thanks.

I hope you all had a good holiday. I ended up with a fair amount of money, which is either going to fund me buying the Ultimate Matrix Collection or all the Matrix comics I can find. However, I did get my Keanu Reeves fix, as I got Dracula for Christmas. It's pretty funny for me, being British, seeing American actors imitate British accents. It's an amazing film though. Very gothic and dramatic. Has anyone else seen it?

Anyway, enjoy!

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**Chapter II: Kiana**

The blonde-haired girl sighed irritably. The excitement of the hack left her with an adrenaline rush that stayed with her for hours afterwards, but then she was hit with a sense of emptiness and loneliness. It was almost becoming an addiction, the compulsion to hack. It ate into her system and embedded itself under her skin.

She didn't really know what had started her hacking in the first place. Originally, she had just been experimenting, pushing the limits of her computer knowledge. She'd always felt more comfortable in virtual reality, and hacking was just another way to expand her talents. That was just over a year ago. Since then, she had just improved more and more, breaking more laws than she even knew about. At first, she had been worried, and she had considered stopping. But, just then, she discovered he first nibble of information about the Matrix. It was only something tiny, a mere mention of something in an Internet article, but that had intrigued her, and since then she had dedicated every moment possible to trying to find the answer to the question. Everything else in her life had fallen apart, but the only thing keeping her going was the feeling that the search might soon be ending.

She manoeuvred through the school hallway, full of noise and laughter and shouting that masked the utter obliviousness of everyone. Here, she was known as Cassandra or Cass, a name she'd never liked. Now, the alias she always used was Kiana. She didn't know where it came from or what it meant, but it had just appeared in her head, and it felt right. It felt like the name she was meant to have.

Thank God I'll be out of here in a few months, she thought. Now that her eighteenth birthday was behind her, she felt like she'd hit her peak. By eighteen, you were meant to have a plan, an idea of what the rest of her life was going to be like. Kiana had nothing. All she knew was the answer to the question was out there, and finding it was consuming her.

She was able to walk through the corridor virtually unnoticed, surprisingly. Really, she should have been quite noticeable, with long white-blonde hair and a fine angular face that seemed too bony. What was more noticeable though were the enormous purple bags under her eyes and her near gauntness. Both came from spending the days pretending to care about her life and the nights hacking endlessly, searching for the answer among a sea of irrelevant information.

Instead of listening to her teacher at the front of the class, she just began to doodle randomly on her piece of paper. She wasn't particularly artistic, but she was bored and her hand was almost moving automatically. After about five minutes, she stopped and looked at the paper more intently. She hadn't really thought about what she was drawing, and now all that she had done were some bizarre letters. Scratch that – they weren't even letters. Okay, some were like reversed letters, but many more were like sharp, angular characters, though some were more curved. Anyway, she had no idea what they meant, and even if she had, she wouldn't have been able to read them. For some reason, she had written them vertically, in a grid, like a magic square, only without numbers. These were…indefinable. Yet, looking at them she felt like a distant memory was surfacing. Her fine brows, as pale as her bleached hair and almost invisible on her pallid face, drew together in confusion and frustration as she stared at the lettering, trying to discover its meaning.

It was only when a fist banged on her desk that she brought herself back to the real world.

"Cassandra Wilcox!" the teacher thundered. "Is that your name, girl?"

_No, it's Kiana. That's my real name_ she thought to herself, though she wasn't stupid enough to say it out loud. "Yes" she replied sullenly.

"Well then, would you please deign to respond it?"

_Do all teachers take classes in sarcasm? _

Kiana tried to listen for the rest of the lesson, but her mind kept slipping to the characters she was drawing on the paper. By the end of the class, she had filled an entire page with those characters. They read like a grid, but each one seemed to have meaning whether they were in the formation or not. It was like seeing a small part of the big picture, that didn't quite make sense on its own. When the bell rang, she stood up, clutching it in her hand, but someone bumped into her from behind and it fluttered out of her hands, swallowed up by the masses of people.

She daydreamed through the rest of her school day, as she was accustomed to do, and didn't say a word to anyone else. When she was a kid, she'd had friends, just like any other kid, but they'd decided she was too weird. When she got to middle school, her natural aptitude for remembering anything had lumped her with the brains, but they'd thought she was too uncaring. When she got to high school, her love of music had helped her into the punk rock scene, but she was too introspective, too wrapped up in herself. Now, she didn't belong anywhere, and she was practically invisible in the business of the school. As far as most people were concerned, she didn't exist to them.

Surprisingly, she didn't care. Nothing else mattered to her at the moment apart from finding the answer.

After school ended, she got back to her house. Her mother was at her job. She worked long, hard hours, to the point that Kiana was sure she didn't remember her daughters' names. Her sister Sophia was out, at another one of her 'social functions'. That was part of the reason Kiana felt so absorbed in finding the Matrix and what it was. She had nothing to keep her here. Her whole family couldn't give a shit about her, except when she did something to embarrass them. The last time she had exchanged more than five sentences with her family was when she ended up in hospital. God that was a bad memory…

She hadn't meant to take the pills. She hadn't meant to take the knife to her wrists. They had just seemed like the right things to do at the time. When she was nearly seventeen, she'd been tired, so tired. Her life was constricting her, threatening to choke her with its suffocating suffering. It was unbearable, filling her with regret and resentment. She'd needed that more than anything else to go through with it. She had wanted to die. But for some reason, she'd lived. The doctors hadn't expected her to. They'd told her mother to prepare for the worst. But she'd lived. Her family hadn't even asked her why she'd done it. They'd just been embarrassed that she had. So, when she got out, Kiana had felt fully prepared to do it again. Why not? She had been ready to die. That was the death she wanted; one where she knew exactly what was coming and she got to pick the place and time. But, then she'd started to hack, and she'd found the Matrix. That had given her a reason to keep going. Purpose gave her life…

Anyway, tearing herself away from memory lane, Kiana realised that she had the house to herself, so she decided to do what she did best. She went into her room and started her computer.

While it loaded, she looked around. She'd had this room her whole life, and it had never changed. It was dark blue, with too much furniture squeezed into the miniscule room. Books and clothes and general rubbish spilled out into the room, covering the floor, with only a path cleared through the room to the bed and to the computer desk. In the darkness of the room, due to the fact that the thick blackout curtains were never opened, it was rather perilous to walk through it. However, Kiana was used to her room, and its darkness, and it didn't bother her anymore.

The computer's eerie mechanical light cast out a ghostly glow over the room, and something prickled up Kiana's back. She had the ghostly sense of being watched, and though she knew that she was quite alone in the room, she still had to look around to be sure. She caught sight of herself in her mirror, half of her face enhanced with the computer's glowing light and the other half in complete darkness. Half of her face was pure, her pale skin and white-blonde hair glowing under the strong light. The other half was totally obscured, to the point that she couldn't distinguish herself from the gloom of the room around her. She felt so bizarre, like she was half in and half out. The thing was, she didn't know what she was in and out of.

The computer beeped irritably at her, and Kiana moved her gaze to the screen, not losing her sense of eeriness. She raised her hands over the keyboard to start typing, but held them poised there. Something was wrong. She had known it since she walked through the door, only she hadn't known how to interpret it. But she knew it, just as she knew her own name.

She debated opening the curtains, but decided against it. Having light wasn't going to help her find this thing. She had to rely on her intuition. Just as she thought that, another thought passed through her head, which she muttered out loud.

"This is crazy" she said. "This is insane. I'm trying to find God knows what by not looking, but by trying to follow my fucking instincts" She paused, throwing her hands up in the air. "And now I'm talking to myself. Bloody marvellous"

A low buzzing filled the air, and Kiana froze. It ended abruptly, and she had the weird feeling that she had imagined it. But no, it started again and she slapped her hands down at her sides in annoyance.

"Does the whole world just want to get my attention, or am I finally insane?" she complained to the ceiling. It depressed her to realise that she was talking more to herself than she had to any other person in the whole day. The regular pattern of silence and buzzing continued. Kiana looked high and low for its source, but couldn't find it. She fell onto the bed into defeat, pressing her ear to the mattress as she lay on her side. After a second, she froze. She suddenly sprang up, shifting piles of junk around so that she could lie on her front on the floor and look under the bed. It was even darker under there, and she couldn't see anything. Extending a hand, she swung it cautiously over the floor, her fingertips barely skimming the dusty floor. She was thinking that she was wrong when her hand hit something light, plastic and vibrating. Her hand closed around it and drew it out. It was a mobile phone. A ringing mobile phone.

"Shit" she breathed. "Not again" How did this phone get under her bed? This was so weird. She kept on getting the feeling that she should be waking up, but she couldn't find a way to do that.

The phone in her hand sprang open, making her jump. She placed it up against her ear cautiously, as though it would do something weird when it touched her ear.

"Hello?" she said tentatively.

"Hello Kiana. We've been watching you for a while"

Kiana looked up at the ceiling in astonishment. "How have you been watching me…you know what, forget it" she muttered. "I'm guessing that if you can sneak a phone into my room you can watch me as well"

There was a light chuckle on the other end of the phone. The voice was definitely male, pitched low and deep. "And you know why I am calling you?"

Kiana paused for a moment, her heart leaping into her mouth. "The Matrix" she breathed.

"Got it in one"

"Can you tell me what it is?" Kiana made no effort to keep the hope out of her voice. She had been looking for this for so long…

"I can do better. I can show you what it is. But first we must meet face-to-face"

Kiana nodded, then remembered she was on the phone. "Yes. When?"

"Tonight, at midnight, in the abandoned warehouse eight blocks down from your house. Will you be there?"

"Yes" Her voice was soft, but determined.

"Good. All I am promising is answers, no more"

The line went dead. Kiana pulled it from her ear, and stared at it incredulously. That had been the strangest conversation of her life. In thirty seconds, her life had been changed. In thirty seconds, everything had changed. It was amazing really, how little time it took to make such a change.

She lay down on the bed, staring at the ceiling so hard that shapes almost began to appear to her weary eyes. She had no idea whether she was awake or asleep, and she had no way of finding out. Instead, she lay, trapped in the limbo and feeling freer than she had for a long time.

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Any thoughts on Kiana? I can never decide if I prefer her or Kes, but they're both really interesting to write. Anyway, please review! 


	3. Chapter III: The Escape

**Anakin McFly** – Thanks for pointing those out to me, I'll try to look out for that in future. Excuse my ignorance, but what's a Mary-Sue? I've heard the term, and no-one has really been able to give me an explanation. Thanks for reviewing!

**Catstring** – Love your name! Yeah, I liked Revolutions, but there's no denying the fact that it is a little depressing as far as Neo and Trinity go!

**Anissa** – Yay! I'm glad, I've read quite a few 'Daughter of the One' stories, and I wanted this one to be as original as possible. Just out of curiosity, what's the other one that you like? Thanks for reviewing!

**Sydney Andrews** – Thanks! Sorry this took a while, but still, thanks for reviewing!

**JimmyNoName** – There are so many clichéd 'Child of the One' stories, and it's really nice to know mine's good! Thanks! Yeah, Dracula's cool. Though the accents still crack me up…Merry (belated) Christmas to you too!

**Bagpipes5K2** – I owe you so many Oracle cookies for reading this through, and for reviewing as well. Thank you! (gives out Oracle cookies with new year frosting)

**Scarstar** – Thanks! I was just looking at your Finland pics on your lj, it looks so cool there. And the Moomintroll is just…scary (joke). Hope you had a great Christmas!

**Veronia** – Here it is! Thanks for reviewing!

Thanks for all the reviews, they really made my holidays. Sorry this took so long, but I was at my dad's, and I couldn't be bothered to take my laptop there, and so when I could get onto a computer, I had to do my History coursework. Fun. Very.

**Catstring**'s review reminded me of something I meant to say earlier. This takes place after the first Matrix – as far as this story is concerned, Reloaded and Revolutions never happened, though elements of them will be drifting into this story later on…

Many thanks as always to the incredible **Bagpipes5K2** for betaing and helping me sort out this chapter. It was originally 4, 491 words long, so I decided to split it, and so a big thank you to Bagpipes for helping me divide it.

* * *

**Chapter III: The Escape**

Even though Kes was almost at the point of feeling nauseous with hunger, she made her way directly to her Operating station. The rest of the crew were there already, and they all looked up as she entered.

"Sorry I'm late," she apologised, keeping her voice deliberately calm and pitched low. "Is it time to go in yet?"

"Almost," Morpheus said. "First, we need to go over our plan. Have you got a secure location yet Link?"

Link tapped in a few final keys decisively. "Yes sir. It's at an office block near the edge of the city. There's a direct hard-line and it'll be totally empty. Give me and Kes five minutes and we'll be able to disable the alarm system, no problems"

"Good. Elysia and I will go straight there to set up the system. Neo, Trinity, if you meet the hacker Kiana and bring her there, that should give us time to set up. Is that clear?"

Elysia, a short woman with slightly curly red hair and pale brown eyes, spoke up. "How long will it take to unplug her?"

"If she picks the red pill, then it will take the machines five to ten minutes to disconnect her, and then we can pick her up from the sewers" Morpheus explained. "If we all jack out immediately, we can pick her up and move away as quickly as possible. There are too many sentinels here, and I do not want to have to use the EMP if at all avoidable"

Kes nodded, crossing her arms across her chest. "What time is it in the Matrix?"

"Just after eleven o'clock" Link said from his console. After being out of contact with the Matrix for so long, many people lost all sense of time. The timing changed somewhat in the Real World anyway, as without the sun, it was difficult to measure day and night.

"We should go in now Morpheus" Trinity said in her quiet way.

"No, wait" Kes said before she knew what she was doing. She frowned, unable to remember what had been going through her head before she had said that.

"Kes?" Neo asked her, studying her face.

"I – I don't know" she admitted, feeling confused. "It just doesn't feel right"

She knew exactly how stupid this sounded. At that moment, Kes felt every awkward inch of fifteen.

"Still, you might have a point" Elysia said slowly. "The later we go in, the less chance we have of running into any Agents"

Morpheus paused, and Kes could visualise the expression on his face, even though she was looking at the floor. She could feel the eyes of her parents on her, and she had to forcibly resist the urge to roll her eyes. She knew that they were worrying about her, and to tell the truth, she was too.

_Why did I say that?_ she wondered to herself. _Why the hell did I open my mouth?_

From the console, Link muttered a small, violent expletive.

"What is it?" Trinity asked him, going over to his side to stare at the code.

"Agents. Three of them…going up to the warehouse"

"The warehouse? Where Kiana is meeting us?" Elysia asked.

"Yeah. How could they know?" Link breathed incredulously.

"How close is that to the hard-line we'd have used to jack in?" Neo asked suddenly. Trinity gave him a softly questioning look.

"Humour me"

Link tapped furiously into the keyboard. "Very close, maybe two blocks away"

Neo's eyes turned to Kes, who met them. "Oh no. I know what you're thinking" she said warningly. "Don't"

"Kes–"

"I am not predicting where Agents are going to be!" Kes said, her voice rising slightly. "It was just a feeling that came out when my mouth and brain disconnected for a second"

"The more important question, I think, is how did they know where we were going to be?" Morpheus asked, diverting the attention away from Kes. "Was the line we used earlier to contact Kiana clean?"

"Yes sir. I checked it myself" Link replied. "Bad news, it doesn't look like they plan to go. They'll probably wait until you jack in"

"Or attack the hacker first" Neo added.

"What are we going to do?" Elysia asked.

"Jack in, take care of them and then meet the hacker" Trinity suggested directly.

"It's risky" Morpheus said. "If we all go in, they'll be no-one to meet the hacker"

"I'll go in" Neo offered. "If I can draw the Agents away, then you can meet the hacker and unplug her"

"If she chooses" Morpheus pointed out.

"Neo, seriously, I know you're the One and all, but holding off Agents for almost half an hour? It's too dangerous" Link pointed out.

"What can we do?" Kes asked.

"Either wait or go in now" Morpheus replied.

"If we jacked in by another hard-line, would we manage to avoid them?" Elysia asked.

"No" Link shook his head. "They'd still find us. They have a way of doing that"

An idea struck Kes. She strode over to her Operating station and started to tap in the code for the location she needed to find.

"Kes, what are you doing?" Trinity asked.

"If Kiana's still in her house, and near her laptop, maybe I can send her another message, telling her to meet us straight at the office block" Kes said, searching her way through the streams of code that flickered down the screen.

"How do we know that they're not tracing her laptop?" Link asked. "Maybe that's how they found her in the first place"

"How do we know they've found her?" Kes argued. "All we know now is that they know what we're planning. That means they probably have a tapped phone, but it's unlikely they've traced her, right?"

"Maybe she's bugged" Trinity said quietly. "Like Neo was"

"Bugged?" Link said sceptically. "That's unusual, even for Agents"

"Maybe that's why they did it, for the unpredictability" Morpheus mused. "But no Agents have been in contact with her"

"She could have been bugged for longer" Elysia pointed out. "We've only been watching her for a month or so"

"But wait a second" Neo broke in. "They bugged me in state that I dismissed as a dream. How would that appear on the code?"

Link shrugged. "Beats me. I've never seen anyone bugged. They only seem to do it in desperation"

"We're running out of time" Kes reminded them. "We need a decision"

Morpheus seemed to ponder this thought for a second. "Kes, have you got through to her yet?"

Kes shook her head. "She's already left" She knew that this tore Morpheus. There was no way to change the plan now, but sending members of his crew into a bunch of Agents was not something he wanted to do.

"I'll go in" Neo offered again. "If we carry out the plan as before, then it can still work"

"I'll go too" Trinity said, casting a quick glance at Neo, who sighed.

"I'd object, but you wouldn't listen anyway"

"Damn right" Trinity retorted. "What time is it Link?"

"Quarter to midnight. It's now or never"

Morpheus nodded. "Alright. And Kes?"

She looked up. "Yeah?"

"If you have any more feelings about Agents – let us know"

Kes rolled her eyes. "It was just that – a feeling" But she was still shaken by it. Everyone in Zion expected her to possess the powers of the One, but until now, she had never possessed a single shred of those sorts of powers. It was understandable – her father's power existed in the Matrix, a place she could not go – but this was definitely eerie.

There was no time to think about it. Kes quickly went around, loading up the monitors next to the chairs for jacking in, sending her parents to the warehouse and Morpheus and Elysia as close to the office block as possible, and Link put the plugs in. Kes was glad; she hated doing that. Sticking a few inches of steel into the back of someone's head definitely seemed unnatural, even though she'd seen and done it her whole life. She didn't even bother to say goodbye to her parents anymore. This was a war, death could happen anytime. There didn't seem to be any point in any sentimentalities. She'd always been crap at them anyway.

She followed Link back to the Operating stations. She instantly tracked the screen, following her parents as they emerged into the Agents.

"Only three" she mumbled. "Come on…you've had worse odds than that"

"First sign of insanity" Link reminded her.

Kes fixed him with her best sardonic glare. "And you think it's taken me this long to recognise my own insanity?"

Link let out a laugh, which quickly turned into an expletive. "Oh shit!"

"Yeah, I'm seeing it too" More Agents were streaming out of thin air to meet Trinity and Neo. "The words 'oh shit' don't even begin to describe this situation"

Kiana was regretting not wearing a jacket. The night air was chillier than she had expected, and her thin grey t-shirt was not suited to the cold. It had been surprisingly easy for her to get out of the house. Her mother had fallen asleep after a few shots of something and her sister was never in anymore. Kiana had been able to walk straight out of the house without hesitation.

The streets had been quiet, eerily so. Only a few distant sirens and wailings had been heard, but the street was decidedly devoid of human life. Kiana would have felt a little scared if her other emotions hadn't been working in overdrive. It wasn't excitement, but a deep, numbing sense of right. If it was possible to classify the world in right and wrong, then this was the right part.

When she got to the warehouse, the eerily quiet feeling didn't go away. If anything it intensified. Kiana waited outside, sitting on the kerb in the cool darkness, not quite sure what she was waiting for. She checked her watch – not quite midnight. She'd been early intentionally. However, the voice of doubt rose up in her head, and she began to look at this sceptically. It was past midnight, no-one was around and she was here freezing her ass off. It definitely smacked of suspicion. But when she'd said yes on the phone, she'd meant it. She'd say the same thing again now.

A crash tore through the silent air, and Kiana started. The sound echoed around the street, and just as the sound died, another followed it. Kiana stood up and turned smoothly, following the sound. It was definitely coming from inside the warehouse. Kiana stood up, walking slowly towards the warehouse. Her rational mind told her not to go in, but curiosity was getting the better of her. She slowly walked towards the warehouse, pressing an ear towards the door. She knew that to the outside world she must have looked insane, but she could hear better this way, and what she could hear was a lot more crashing, as though something or someone was being thrown around.

Before she properly knew what she was doing, Kiana thrust the door open, and found her way in. What she saw stopped her cold.

"Oh my God" she breathed.

The warehouse was packed with, say, fifteen men in violently conformist suits. They all were wearing sunglasses, and had some sort of earpiece. The only two people in the room that didn't fit this pattern were in the centre, fighting them with both impressive martial arts and weapons skills. Both of them – a man and a woman – were clad in black leather and trenchcoats.

Now, one of the suits had noticed her. His smirk was malicious, and the gun in his hand did nothing for Kiana's confidence over the situation. She moved backwards, meaning to escape out of the door, but it was blocked, and she had no intention of trying to fight her way out. Flight seemed like the more sensible option, but she had nowhere to run to. She glanced around, looking for another exit, when she saw the handgun, lying abandoned on the floor – it must have got knocked out of someone's hand. She dove for it, picking it up carelessly. The Agent, wearing the same aggressively dull brown suit as the others, pulled out his own gun. Kiana reacted instinctively. She held the gun up, aimed wildly and shot, the trigger cutting into her flesh. She hadn't realised how much effort it took to pull a trigger. The range was almost point-blank, and her aim, while not perfect, should have shot him through the shoulder, if not the chest.

Kiana gasped, partly with the disbelief that she had actually shot a gun. The lump of metal, with a freezing cold handle and a warm barrel, felt like it was searing her flesh. It was amazing the desperation that had driven her to shoot, almost instinctively. She wanted to cast it away, try to forget what she'd done, but the Agent merely twisted, moving too fast and too agilely for a human, and the bullet embedded itself in the opposite wall without passing through him.

The Agent was still coming at her, and Kiana tried to raise the handgun again, but she was too slow. The Agent knocked the gun out of her slack grip and it clattered against the wall. Now Kiana was defenceless and vulnerable. Staring down the barrel of a gun, she thought that she would see her life flashing before her eyes. Instead, she only saw the silver barrel glaring at her in the face, and a few expletives flaring through her mind. It was amazingly simple, dying. In the work of a moment, someone could take their last breath and die, just cease to exist. Kiana drew in a deep lungful of air with the ominous feeling that it was her last.

* * *

Ooh, cliffhanger…Tell you what, I promise to update in a week, but if I break 10 reviews for this chapter before that, I'll update the second I get the 10th review for Chapter III. How's that? Seem fair?

Hope you liked it, please review!


	4. Chapter IV: Choices

**ReDblooDpassioN – **Thanks! Um, do you mean Kes? If so, yeah, I'd agree! Thanks for reviewing!

**Scarstar** – Crap! Thanks for pointing that out. I would say I'd correct it, but then I'd have to come up with another excuse for furthering my plot! Thanks for the website as well, it was really helpful!

**Bagpipes5K2** – Kiana thanks you (: I hate my own fight scenes, so it's great to know someone out there likes them!

**Anakin McFly** – Did you get my reply? I know, looking back I was using some really crappy English. It's been corrected though (didn't make it anyway). Thanks for reviewing!

**willaim johns** – Wow! I'm feeling very flattered, and thanks for reviewing every chapter! It felt really good to wake up and suddenly have three more reviews! Thanks!

**Annisa** – I think I read The Fourth Kingdom a while back, I thought it was pretty good. I need to look up The Wrong Target, thanks for the suggestion! And yeah, I'm trying to avoid the Mary-Sue trap. Thanks for your confidence!

Thanks to everyone who helped with my Mary-Sue confusion. I really hope that Kes and Kiana aren't going to turn out like that, and thank you for all the encouragement as well! If at any point they're looking like Mary-Sues, tell me so I can bang my head against a wall and then fix it.

Thanks again to **Bagpipes** for betaing.

* * *

**Chapter IV: Choice**

Suddenly, another pistol was shoved to the Agent's head, and pulled before it could dodge it. The body fell to the floor, amazingly lifeless. Kiana looked up at the leather-cad female in front of her. She was handling the firearm with competence and the air of one who is usually in complete control of themselves. She glanced down at Kiana, her expression masked by masking sunglasses.

"Are you Kiana?" she asked in a clipped tone.

Kiana nodded. The woman helped her up and shot in the direction of another Agent with one fluid movement. The Agent dodged the bullets, and continued advancing on them.

"Whoa, shit. What are you?" Kiana asked her incredulously.

"Someone who needs to get you out of here."

"That's helpful." Kiana muttered.

Out of the corner of his eye, Neo could see Trinity fighting her way towards him with Kiana in tow.

"Neo, we need to get her to Morpheus"

_Morpheus? As in_ the _Morpheus?_ Kiana thought.

"You go. I'll hold them off."

"No," the woman insisted. "It's too dangerous."

"If we lived by that philosophy, we'd never jack in." he replied, delivering a well-aimed kick to the side of an Agent's head. "I can get Kes to set me up another exit if I don't make it to the office block."

The woman nodded, slowly, hesitantly. "Okay." With a quick flicker of her eyes back to the man, which Kiana did not miss, she pressed a gun into Kiana's hands.

"Follow me." she said. With a combination of martial arts and shooting skills, she managed to clear a path to the door. Kiana clutched the gun tightly, but she was glad not to have to use it. A few more shots and they were outside. An Agent tried to follow them out, but another shot from within and he slumped back inside. Kiana followed the woman blindly into the street as she pulled out a cellphone, with the handgun still clutched tightly in her hand even though she no longer remembered why she had it.

Back on the Neb, Kes was desperately trying not to chew her nails, even though she was hacking into the office block security system to dismantle the alarm system. It was something she'd done ever since she was a child, and it seemed to grow more compulsive when she was in a stressful situation. When the phone rang, she was shocked out of her reverie and responded just as she had always done.

"Operator." she replied automatically.

"Kes, we need a car." It always amazed Kes that wherever she was and whatever she was doing, her mother's voice was always as cool and calm as always.

Kes tapped into the keyboard rhythmically. "There's a black Cadillac around the corner. Keys are in the ignition…now."

"Thanks Kes. How's Neo doing?"

Kes was glad she asked, as it gave her another excuse to focus on him. "Fine. He's holding his own."

"Good," Trinity breathed into the phone. She knew Neo was the One, she knew he was perfectly capable of holding off Agents, but she was still allowed to watch his back. "What's the nearest hard-line for him to jack out from?"

"In an emergency, the one you came in by." Using the same hard-line to jack in and out of with was quite risky, as it usually advertised their position to Agents, but in an emergency it was alright. "If not, we could set up another close by."

"Okay." Trinity hung up. She turned back to Kiana. "Are you ready to meet him?"

Kiana nodded. "Will he tell me what the Matrix is?"

Trinity nodded, figuring that a half-truth was better than the whole truth at this point. Morpheus was better at this than her anyway.

"Come." she said, leading the way to the car. Just as Kes had said, the doors were open and the keys were in the engine. Kiana got into the back, feeling a little fearful. This wasn't quite what she had expected.

Trinity started to drive, accelerating smoothly to a good speed. That afternoon they had all memorised a route to make this mission easier, and she knew exactly where she was going. There was no other way to get to the office block without passing in front of the warehouse though, so she sped up as they passed it, trying to avoid any tangles with Agents. However, as they passed the warehouse, the door opened and a dark shape hurled out of it. Trinity braked sharply, but barely had time to grasp a gun before the passenger side door opened and the man from before leapt into the car.

"Is everything alright?" Trinity asked as she sped the car away.

Neo nodded, removing his sunglasses.

"Um, I don't want to sound like a nutcase, but where the fuck are we going?" Kiana asked in a very controlled voice that was her way of covering for the shock that was numbing her system. This was all just a little over her head.

"Somewhere where you can get the answers you want – if you really want them." Trinity replied cryptically. "Neo, can you call Kes or Link about the bugging gun?"

Bugging gun? Kiana thought. This is definitely not a good thing.

Neo flipped open his cell phone, and heard Link's voice greeting him.

"Operator."

"Link? We need a bugging gun."

"Sure thing." Link replied. "Give me a second…okay, done."

Neo felt rather than saw the code change around him, and the gun dropped into his hand.

The car pulled into an alley and stopped. Kiana looked around, surprised by the lack of movement.

"Why have we stopped?" she asked with some trepidation.

Neo swung around in his seat, holding a gun that Kiana hadn't seen him draw. "This is just our insurance." he warned her, though that wasn't very comforting for her.

Trinity got out of the driver's seat and walked around into the seat beside Kiana.

"What is that!" she asked, her pale blue eyes fixated on the large gun.

"We think you might be bugged. It's just a precaution." Trinity said. "Pull up your shirt slightly."

Kiana's expression didn't change, but inside she was feeling more than a little doubtful. However, something in Trinity's manner made it very clear that this was an order to be obeyed, and so she pulled her shirt up a couple of inches.

Trinity picked up the gun and held it just over Kiana's midriff. It clamped down on her abdomen hard, stretching the skin taut.

"What is going on?" Kiana asked. No-one answered her. She found that she couldn't take her eyes away from the gun being pressed into her stomach. If she tried to turn away, her eyes were drawn to the gun barrel pointing in her face. It was making her feel slightly nauseous, really.

Trinity's expression darkened as she worked the gun, her gaze intent on the small monitor screen.

"What is it?" Neo asked her.

"There isn't anything."

"No bug?"

"Nothing."

Kiana was starting to feel distinctly uncomfortable. It was one thing to be driven over town by strangers promising answers. It was quite another to have them somehow probing into her stomach with a sort of x-ray machine.

"If there's nothing there…" Neo began, his eyes locking with Trinity's and a whole wealth of unspoken information passed between them. Kiana got the feeling that a whole conversation was happening, she just couldn't hear it.

Neo's cellphone started to ring, and he lowered the gun to answer it. Kiana breathed an internal sigh of relief. It was getting difficult to breathe with a gun aimed between her eyes.

"Dad?" Kes was speaking into her headset. "Listen, Morpheus called. They're ready for you. And we don't think she's bugged. Nothing's showing up on the coding, and even the Agents leave traces."

"Okay, we'll take her to Morpheus. Thanks Kes."

Kes hung up, feeling exhausted. She tried not to let on, but she'd been more worried during the warehouse fight than she had let on. She'd seen her parents take on Agents during awful odds, but this had felt different. And Kiana appearing in the middle of it hadn't helped anything.

Her stomach was begging her for food. Kes tried to ignore it, but it was very insistent. She sighed. This was going to be a long night.

When Neo got off the phone, he relayed the message to Trinity, who slid back into the driver's seat, leaving the bugging gun next to Kiana on the seat, who just sat there passively as the car started again, waiting for explanations that never came.

Finally, the car pulled up to a tall building. Kiana followed Trinity and Neo as they led the way through the deserted building. The rational part of Kiana's brain told her that it was way too easy to get into a high-profile office building with expensive equipment everywhere. The other part of her brain was a little scared by the sterile atmosphere, the darkness and dim blue light making it all seem eerie.

On one of the top floors, they stopped outside a room with closed double doors. Kiana felt a great sense of anticipation.

"Here's some free advice." Trinity said abruptly. "Be honest. He knows more than you could possibly imagine" She opened the door, and Kiana walked through it without hesitation. She was expecting someone huge, someone instantly impressive, someone whose presence made the air around them almost shimmer. She got all of that.

Morpheus was the sort of person who made their surroundings seem insignificant and any other details irrelevant. Kiana also felt like she could instantly trust him.

"Welcome Kiana." he greeted her from his high-backed chair. "Please, sit."

As she sat down, she suddenly had a feeling that she'd walked through a one-way door. She might have been able to get out, but she didn't want to. Something inside her told her that this was exactly where she was meant to be.

The reason they had picked the room at the top of the office building was that the room beyond the one Morpheus was in with Kiana, the room they had set up all the equipment to unplug her had two entrances. One was through Morpheus' room. The other was through a corridor that followed around the shape of the building. Trinity and Neo walked through this.

Neo smiled suddenly. "What's so funny?" Trinity asked him.

"You said practically the same thing to me before I met Morpheus."

Trinity returned the smile. "After so many unpluggings, I guess I got bored of trying to be different." She brushed a strand of hair away from her face, and Neo caught sight of a sharp, deep graze down the side of her neck and face.

"You're hurt."

"It's nothing" When she saw that he didn't believe her, she furthered her plea. "It doesn't even hurt. I can get it sorted when we're back on the Neb"

"I just don't want to see you get hurt." he assured her, and Trinity saw the sincerity in his dark brown eyes.

"Trust me, I'm not going to." she said, gripping his hand with her own. She let a second pass before gently steering the conversation back to more mundane matters. "Come on. Elysia could probably use our help"

"If she accepts." Neo reminded her.

"I've only known two people who refused. And if not, we just have more clearing up to do." Trinity said with a small smile as they pushed through the door into the equipment-filled room.

Kiana stared at the pills in front of her. She knew before Morpheus had even shown them to her which one she would choose. She picked up the red pill within a matter of seconds, washing it down with a conveniently-placed glass of water.

Morpheus smiled at her. "Come with me."

"This is some of my crew. Elysia, Trinity and Neo." Morpheus indicated each person in turn. What fascinated Kiana was the equipment they were working with. Elysia and Neo were both at computers, but the screens were filling with scrolling green characters that ran down the black background. Kiana was dying to examine it more carefully, but there was no time, as she was directed to a chair in the middle. She sat down, feeling like a victim being sent to the electric chair. Morpheus opened his cellphone and spoke into it without dialling.

"Kes? Have you got a lock?"

The response must have been yes, because Morpheus looked up and nodded at Trinity. Kiana followed the motion, but never knew what happened next, because after that, the world she had known vanished from her sight.

At the Operating station, Kes leaned back in her chair and sighed briefly.

"That little unplugging took almost two bloody hours." she complained. "I'm pretty sure I came close to having a couple of embolisms, and I haven't eaten for about eight hours. I need a new job."

* * *

I'm sorry, I really love Kes. She's just so sarcastic. She is also occasionally a spoilt brat, but that's okay. The bratty side will come out more at some point, I promise…that's going to be fun to write.

Please review!


	5. Chapter V: Recovery

**scarstar **– I agonised over those bits, because both of them aren't easy characters to describe! Kind of like MOPI characters…Mike and Scott both caused me moments where I felt like throwing the computer at the wall…Thanks for the compliments and the review!

**Sydney Andrews** – I hope the bit below about Kes answers some of your questions. I fixed that sentence by the way…that's what I get for writing at three in the morning! I always wanted Kes as an Operator, it forces her to be passive when she's a very active personality and character. I both love and hate writing Neo and Trinity, because some of the time they're very unspoken, and then I get sick of them just not talking, so I tend to keep my Neo/Trinity moments to a minimum. Thanks for reviewing!

**willaim johns** – Thanks! I like to get a reply when I review, so it seems only fair that I reply. Thanks for reviewing!

**Bagpipes5K2 **– Because this is the sort of Matrix soap opera, it wouldn't work if Kiana didn't join the Neb (: It's actually a thought that never crossed my mind, I just really wanted to move on with the story so I thought she'd just join the Neb and then I could get a move on!

Okay, in the last chapter, some people commented that Kes is kind of bratty, more concerned with herself than others. The thing about Kes is that she's almost gotten used to a world where her whole family is important and revered, and subconsciously, she's accepted that and kind of likes it. Hence the brattiness. It's not conscious, but she has gotten a little too used to it over the years. Also, she's sarcastic, like all my characters, because I am too, and so her comment at the end is her way of expressing relief at the whole episode being over. She's glad that it's all over, that everything's going to be alright now and she doesn't have to worry about her parents, and so she expresses that with a stunning return to her cynical form. Kes is very good at being dramatic and over-emphasising the points she wants to think about, but there are some things she'd rather not think about (ie; the chance of her parents dying). She tries to clamp down on those emotions and so covers up her feelings with sarcasm.

Does that make sense? If anyone wants a more in depth analysis of Kes or Kiana, tell me and I'll be happy to explain.

This is where the plot is revealed, so an important chapter! Thanks again to Bagpipes, as always, for betaing and giving me encouragement.

* * *

**Chapter V: Recovery**

Kiana had no idea how long she was asleep for. Once the world had vanished, all she remembered was a lot of red light, combined with the feel of rough, mechanical steel beneath her fingers and pain down her back. She remembered the feeling of waters closing over her, and then a feeling of falling. After that, it was completely black.

She had to consciously think to open her eyelids – they had never seemed so heavy before. When she managed to prise them open, the intensity of the light around her made her eyes sting and water instinctively, even though the light was not that bright.

The room started to spin. Kiana squeezed her eyes shut, revelling in the darkness that came, and tried to calm her whirling head down. She had the strange feeling of being disconnected from her body, and that she was just a floating head in midair. Her whole consciousness felt like it was hovering several feet above her brain, and the swirling feeling wasn't going away. She forced her eyes open again, and tried to figure out where the hell she was.

Her ears felt like they were stuffed with cotton wool, and she couldn't hear anything properly. All she could hear was a low, mechanical humming, like a computer echoing in a dark, empty room. It felt so far away, but the intensity of the lights told her that it was a lot closer.

She licked her dry, cracked lips and tried to speak, but her mouth felt like it didn't know how to work. Her throat scratched and burned like it was stuck. All that came out was a pale, almost noiseless groan.

Through the fogginess of her ears, she could hear someone moving around near her. Their footsteps, ringing with a metallic sound, were coming closer towards her, she could tell.

"Kiana?" The voice was feminine, and youthful. "How do you feel?"

"Like crap" she managed to rasp out. "Where am I?"

"The Real World" the voice replied softly.

"What?" Kiana asked, but was interrupted by a fit of coughing, which made her throat burn. There was no moisture in her throat, which made it hurt more than ever. Her stomach was empty, and yet she felt slightly nauseous, the scent of bile stinging her sore throat.

"Don't worry yet" the voice reassured her. "It'll all be explained soon. Just relax, and sleep"

Kiana felt a warm hand on her forehead, and a sense of weariness overcame her. Though she was still full of questions, she let herself drift into a dream world.

The next time Kiana woke up, the room was exactly identical, so she couldn't tell whether she had been asleep for a minute, an hour or a week. The first thing that struck her when she opened her eyes that the light no longer hurt as much. In fact, she could see things better, though the minute details seemed to elude her. For example, the ceiling was just a blue-grey metal blur. But that was more than she could see the last time she woke up, so hey, it was an improvement.

Her nose itched suddenly, and she tried to raise her hand to scratch it. Her arm felt weird though, strangely heavy and leaden. As she brought it into her line of vision, the image of a hedgehog flashed into her mind. It might have had something to do with the fact her arm had been turned into an acupuncturist's plaything.

"Holy fucking hell!" she swore violently, although her croaky, disused voice took some of the effect out of the words.

"Good to know you're feeling okay" It was the person from before, but this time there was a considerable amount of humour in her voice.

"Do I look okay?" Kiana rasped back. "What the shit are you doing to me?"

"Building up your muscles with atropine" the girl replied. "So sorry, no movement. Don't even turn your head, unless you like needles being embedded into your skull"

Kiana rolled her eyes, and then realised how much that hurt, and stopped suddenly. "What am I meant to do then?"

"Sleep?"

"Helpful" Kiana replied with a drowsy sarcasm. There was the sound of light laughter above her, and then silence. Kiana knew she hadn't gone away, but she didn't have the energy to try and talk again.

There was a pause, during which Kiana began to realise she was in considerable pain. Well, what did she expect? She had needles stuck into every bit of available skin. _This is surreal_, she thought before drifting off into a state between waking and sleeping, almost like a self-induced coma, brought on by a combination of pain, boredom and confusion. One thought passed through her head in this bizarre limbo place. _How do I know when I'm awake or when I'm asleep?_

Kiana woke up in a totally different place. At first, it looked exactly the same; same old, dank steel ceiling with blue tints where it caught the light, same bolts sealing the whole structure together. However, she was in a proper bed, and wearing proper clothes. Granted, they were only dark blue trousers and a grey, thinly woven pullover, but she was feeling a little warmer than she had in days. Considering how cold the ship was though, it wasn't much warmer.

Looking around, she could see an IV bag hanging near her. Following the line down with her eyes, Kiana realised that it was hooked into her skin, through a black hole of metal. It was almost sewn into the skin, like it was blocking a wound. The IV was connected through that. Kiana grabbed it and pulled it out in one swift movement. She gasped with shock as pain rippled down her arm. She hadn't expected it to hurt like that. It was metal. Metal didn't hurt. Obviously though it was connected to her skin, and then deeper inside her body. Rubbing her arm with her hand – as though it would help – Kiana's mind began to reel in a number of abstract directions. One part of her was wondering where she was. Another was wondering how much time had passed between the night at the warehouse and now. Another was trying to piece together all the information to make a complete picture, but there were too many gaps, too many holes.

Speaking of holes, she checked her other arm. A black metal plug was there in the same place as her other arm. A sudden twinge racked through her back as she bent down to feel her legs. Reaching over her shoulder, her hand searching between her shoulder blades, she found more holes, trailing down her spine. A quick search of her lower legs found more, place symmetrically on her body.

Kiana reached up a hand to push her hair away from her face, something she always did on waking up. Instead, she flinched as her hand made contact with her bare scalp. No shred of her white-blonde hair remained. Her whole head was devoid of any hair, though her eyebrows were a thin stubble. What she didn't realise, what she couldn't see, was that they were much darker than before, almost black.

"What is going on?" she wondered to the world. "Where am I?"

Since the empty air wasn't going to answer her, she decided to find something that could. Walking on legs that felt uncharacteristically weak, she hobbled towards the door and opened it, wincing a little at the loud, clunky sound it made. Unlike when she was first unplugged, her senses felt raw and sensitive, like they had only just been exposed to the outside world.

The hallway outside was empty, but the constant humming and whirring of machines made it seem more alive, but the echoes of noise created an atmosphere of loneliness. A feeling of unease settled in Kiana's stomach, but she suppressed it and walked along the metal grate with small, soft steps.

It took her about a dozen steps before she realised she had no idea where she was going. It took her another three before she realised that it didn't matter. Wherever she went, she had to find people, people who could explain this to her, people who could tell her what had happened. Another step and this determination grew to the point that it rang out with every step that she took.

A door was ajar at the end of the hall, showing a pale, pure light. Kiana pushed it slightly, noting the thickness and weight of the door in a way she never had before, slipping into the room with a sort of feline grace. The room was obviously a sort of mess hall, as there was a table with bench chairs around it, and something that could have passed for cutlery on the side. The room wasn't empty, as there was a girl at the end with a mug of water and a dish of something that reminded Kiana uncomfortably of white vomit.

As Kiana entered, the girl raised her head, meeting her eyes with a friendly smile. "Didn't know you were up. How are you feeling?"

Kiana nodded slowly. "Not bad"

"Want something to eat?" the girl offered, flicking a few strands of black hair out of her dark eyes.

Kiana cast her eyes over the slop in the tray. "I'm good" she lied. "Who are you?"

"I'm Kes" the girl introduced herself. "I've been watching you for the last couple of days"

Kiana had a weird feeling of being a creature under a microscope. "Why?" she asked with slight trepidation.

Kes shrugged. "Procedures, checks – you'll be told more about it all soon"

Kiana raised an eyebrow.

"You'll get the answers soon, I promise" Kes assured her whilst eating a spoonful of the slop. "Sorry. I recently went on an involuntarily hunger strike and I have no intention of doing it again"

Kiana smiled, but the sight of the food – if it could be called that – was making her feel nauseous. Instead of looking at it, she took stock of her surroundings studying the room. She froze as she looked at the slightly shiny wall, in which she could see her own features faintly. Her face rose like an oval moon, just as she remembered, but her bald head shocked her. However, above her eyes, she could see the shadow of her eyebrows, much darker than she had remembered and they showed up like shadows on an x-ray. Even in a proper mirror, her eyebrows usually barely showed up. Because their white-blonde colour, they seemed invisible. _Must be the light,_ Kiana thought, running a finger along her brows. The hairs seemed rough and almost sharp to her fingers, as the stubble was growing back unevenly.

"Are you okay?" Kes asked her with, to her credit, no hint of insincerity in her voice. Kiana realised with a start that staring into the wall and fondling her eyebrows was not a good way to maintain both her dignity and her sanity.

"Fine" she lied again, and stood up. "I think I need to sleep" she said, just as a way to end the conversation.

"Can you find your way back to your room?"

Kiana nodded. Part of the reason she wanted to get out of there was that she was feeling tired and ill, but another reason was that something about Kes disconcerted her. She didn't know why, since Kes was pretty friendly, but something really confused her. It would pass. It was just a reaction to all of this. Was it? It had to be, she told herself.

She left the room quickly and silently.

Kes didn't know why she was taking so many shifts in the Med Bay. It was kind of for the change. Usually all she did was repairing the ship or watching the Matrix. It was interesting to do this sort of work. Plus, it was mainly solitary so she got a chance to think.

One weakness that she fully admitted to herself was that she was truly awful at letting things go. And the fact that she had an impulsive streak running strongly through her meant that she had many things to think over and regret. One was the mess she was making with her life. The other was the mess she was making with her parents.

It was a shocking insight to realise that no-one had ever asked her what she wanted. She couldn't jack in and she wanted to be on a ship. That meant that she could only be an Operator. Cradle to grave, she'd just be watching other people make a difference. She'd never get a chance to do that herself.

The whole transfer to the Logos, it was mainly talk and bullshit. She knew that Niobe would accept her, as a favour to Morpheus and her parents. But maybe she didn't want to be accepted on a favour. Maybe she needed to prove herself, prove that she wasn't her parents' daughters.

Was it horrible of her to sometimes hate her parents for the burden they'd saddled her with? Not only was she born into a war where she couldn't do a goddamn thing to help except watch and pray, she was the daughter of the first person ever to kill an Agent and the One, which kind of spoke for itself. Kes had meant what she said to Morpheus about Zion. She wanted to go back, but for a deeper reason. She had to prove to them that she had a purpose. The Council, the Zionites everyone who looked at her with mingled pity and awe. She needed to go back there and prove to them that she was her own person.

There was a tiny part of her though, the voice of reason, the one that Kes tried to ignore nine times out of ten, saying that maybe she wasn't trying to prove it to other people. Maybe she needed to prove it to herself as well. Kes scowled as that thought flickered through her mind. _Bloody reasoning_, she thought angrily.

The computer interrupted her thoughts by beeping. Kes immediately typed her password in, the same one she'd used all her life, and checked what it wanted to tell her. It was just the results of a blood test. Nothing interesting. She looked at it anyway, just for interest's sake.

_Blood Test: Kiana_

_Match Found_

Kes stared at the screen. This is new, she thought. Even if blood types matched, it didn't show up on the screen. It only showed up if there was some sort of genetic link. She typed into the keyboard furiously, asking for more details.

After a second, the computer gave her a new message.

_Matches on board Nebuchadnezzar: Neo, Trinity, Kesare_

Well, the link between the three of them was obvious…Kes' eyes widened. "I can't have made a mistake" she whispered to herself. She backtracked over the computer, checking all the data she entered that day. Nothing was obviously wrong with it.

_What does Kiana have to do with us?_ Kes wondered. She'd been watching Kiana, both in the Matrix and in the Real World. There wasn't a single thing to connect them. For starters, she was blonde. Enough said.

Still, all of this was bizarre. How could she be related to them? Kiana was eighteen for God's sake, three years older than Kes. Eighteen years ago…Kes did some maths on her fingers. Her father would have been barely unplugged, if that. She didn't have the whole story, as no-one felt it necessary to tell her. What she knew about the Neb and the war before she was born came mainly from gossip and hacking into Zion computer systems. She knew virtually nothing about her parents' lives before she was born, but she knew enough to know that eighteen years ago her parents weren't together, but she realised, kicking herself, that it was irrelevant. She was overlooking the obvious. Kiana was plugged into the Matrix. How could she be plugged in and related to two pod-borns and one freeborn? Parents and families in the Matrix meant nothing; a whole family could share no genetic material. It was only in the Real World that genetics actually counted for anything, that they actually existed beyond being an illusion of the Matrix. Since genetics counted for shit, Kiana could, possibly, be related to both her parents dating back from the time when they were still plugged into the Matrix. But eighteen years ago Trinity was definitely free…and it still didn't explain how she was related to Kes…

Still, this all led her back to the original question. What did Kiana have to do with her and her family?

* * *

Okay, there's not that much more to say…this was the big plotbunny chapter. Any comments? Please review! 


	6. Chapter VI: Understanding

**scarstar** – I think I'm projecting all my own opinions into this, so they might be wrong, but the ambiguity of some stuff in the movies really annoys me. So I thought I'd try to fix that (: Thanks for reviewing!

**Rhiannon Reeves** – I'm sorry I made you think about it for so long! Thanks for the review, I love writing Kes. She's such a sarcastic person, which is great, because so am I. Thanks for reviewing!

**Bagpipes5K2 **– Oh, that sounds like an idea for a new fanfic…no, no, I really must finish something first! I love the idea of genetics and stuff in the Matrix, and it's an idea that'll be coming back to haunt everyone…but I've said too much (:

**S. J. adams** – Thank you! Your review really made my day. At the moment Bagpipes5K2 is very kindly betaing my work, but if there's ever a problem, I'll email you straight away. Thanks for offering and for reviewing!

**Sydney Andrews** – Feel free to email me anytime you like – link's in my profile. The only reason I really shy away from writing Neo and Trinity is that there are many writers out there who do it way better than I feel I do, but if you think my Neo/Trinity stuff if okay, then I'll try and work them in. Your comment about Kiana has spawned a whole chapter idea, so thank you for that! Thanks for reviewing, I've really begun to look forward to your reviews (:

I'm sorry I've been so long, but I've been really busy. I've just been told that I only have 53 school days left until my GCSEs. I'm in shock. Though I did take time out last Wednesday to go to a preview screening of Walk the Line, 10 days before it was released in the UK. Needless to say, I've been a little obsessed since then. I'm also going to see it on the day it comes out (:

I just put up a King Kong fic, and so if anyone's a fan, I'd feel honoured if they would read and review. Thanks!

Anyway, I hope you like this chapter, and thanks again to **Bagpipes**, as always, for betaing.

* * *

**Chapter VI: Understanding**

The next few days were a blur for Kiana. Blissfully oblivious to Kes' new knowledge, and wrapped up in questions and uncertainty, she didn't notice Kes' new, detached attitude towards her, which was a mercy in itself. She met the rest of the crew more and more, but was not plugged into the Construct yet, or told what the Matrix was. She was still reacting to the shock of being unplugged, and it didn't seem fair to inflict the harsh reality of the world upon her yet. However, she was still desperate to discover the exact nature of the Matrix, and it was eating her up inside, the same double-edged hunger that had consumed her in the Matrix, only this was sharper, because she sensed she was on the cusp of finding the truth.

Kes was still attached to the job of looking after Kiana, so she couldn't stop seeing her, and she had no intention of telling Morpheus what she now knew. Instead, she made time to scan every machine in the med bay, checking for a virus or a spike that could have made the machine malfunction. But the machine was clean. Nothing was out of place, nothing was where it was not meant to be. The only thing Kes could think to do was get another blood sample from Kiana and run it through again, but manually. It took hours, and was incredibly tedious, but it was the only way she could think of to prove that this was wrong, that the computers were faulty. Somehow proving it wrong seemed more important than trying to accept it as right.

The only problem with this was that as far as the rest of the crew was concerned, she already had the bloods she needed. She'd need to hack into the computer to get it to delete that information. Also, to run it through manually would take about three hours, and if she spent three hours in front of a computer screen for no obvious reason, someone would notice. And then she'd have to explain and this would all get way, way out of proportion. All it was was a little malfunction. Nothing big. That didn't explain why Kes had woken up twice in the night with a heavy, fearful feeling in her stomach. She knew something wasn't right.

She was still pondering over that in the mess hall, when she thought she was alone. Kes had meant to grab a tray of food and eat as quickly as possible, so that she could get back to work. But, as she filled up her tray with gruel, she paused, suddenly struck down by a mist of possibility. What if they were related? What if there was some sort of genetic link between them? Were they sisters or something? Were–?

"Kes?"

A hand on her shoulder gently brought Kes around. "Are you alright?" Trinity asked, concern showing in her pale blue eyes.

"I'm fine" Kes replied. "Just tired. And hungry. I don't seem to get enough of either"

"You should" Trinity said firmly to her daughter. "Take a break after this. I'll cover you"

Kes shook her head. "I'll have one soon"

Trinity cast a disapproving eye over her daughter, but said nothing. She knew from experience that Kes' stubborn streak was a mile wide. Instead she got herself some food and started to eat, hoping that Kes would follow her example. Typically, she didn't. Instead, she looked pensive. "Mom, can I ask you something?" she said suddenly.

Trinity nodded, surprised.

"Have you ever had a feeling, something that's almost completely unfounded and really should be impossible, but you know is true?" Kes asked slowly. Whilst she didn't always see eye to eye with her parents, if anyone was going to give her a good answer about this, it was going to be them.

"Yes" she said slowly. "I have"

"When?"

"When I met your father" Trinity said softly.

"Oh god, please don't tell me. I'm probably too young to hear it" Kes protested.

Trinity allowed herself to smile slightly at her daughter's humour – although she was deadly serious. "I don't mean just that" she said. "I mean there are some things you know. Without proof, without substance, you have faith in them. When we unplugged Neo, I knew"

"You knew he was the One" Kes said meditatively. "You just knew it?"

"Just knew it" Trinity affirmed. "Why do you ask?"

Kes shrugged. "Just wondering" She tried to think of a way to change the subject. "Is Kiana being loaded into the Construct today?"

Trinity nodded. "We've delayed it too long as it is" There was a small pause, in which she decided to take the plunge. "Kes, do you really want to transfer to the Logos?"

Kes sighed. "No, I like being on the Neb" she admitted, hating the part of her which felt guilty for lying to her parents. "But I'm sick of feeling helpless. And bored"

At that moment, Elysia thrust her head around the door. "Morpheus says come on up. He's taking Kiana through the training and needs you both there"

Kes got up immediately, glad to leave the conversation behind. One little thing, one little idea, one thing she'd said in a moment of fury and it didn't look like her mother was ever going to forget it. It was a lesson for life. Just be perfect. Never say or do anything you don't mean, because it won't be forgotten. Perfect things are clear. Imperfect things leave a stain behind.

Kiana lay down in the dentist's chair – or that was what it felt like, anyway – and tried to relax. Tried and failed. She was tense as shit and there was no way of getting around that. The muscles in her thighs were aching from being so taut for so long. Her fingernails, though they were not overlong, were digging into her palms and sleeves alternately. It was painful, but she didn't notice.

"This will feel a little weird" Morpheus warned her, brandishing a metal spike, almost three or four inches long.

"Holy shit, what is that for?" Kiana cursed. She hoped no-one noticed how scared she was.

"It'll take you to another. Somewhere where I can show to you what the Matrix is" Morpheus replied.

Kiana took a deep breath, willing her racing heart to slow down. Again, without success. Every muscle in her body was tensed, as if for flight. As she grappled with trying to relax and not giving into her fear, she didn't notice the metallic swish of the plug as it went into the back of her head. That was, until the pain set it. Well, not so much pain as irritation. It was like having something in your eye, and scratching it just made it even more sore. Kiana squeezed her eyes shut, trying to escape from the pain, which disappeared abruptly and unnaturally. For a second, she wondered whether the spike had been pulled out of the back of her head, but when she raised up her hand to the plug at the back of her head, her fingertips found warm skin and fine strands of hair instead of cool metal. Thoroughly confused, she looked around. The place she was in was so dazzlingly white that she couldn't tell ceiling from wall from floor. An antique television set was suspended opposite two high-backed chairs, so it seemed.

"This is the Construct" Kiana jumped. She wheeled around to see Morpheus, dressed suavely in a dark purple suit and sharp green tie. His eyes were obscured by wraparound sunglasses perched on the bridge of his nose. He sure as hell hadn't looked like this five minutes ago, when she had seen him last. But then again, the world she had just been getting to know had vanished from her sight, and had been replaced with a minimalist's dream world. Had her appearance changed too? She thought she might have hair. Definitely different. "It is a controlled program where we can simulate the Matrix"

"We're in a program? Didn't see that coming"

"Yes. The plug in the back of your head is connected to our computer mainframe through the rod inserted through your skull"

Kiana shivered, and placed a hand over the back of her skull, still expecting to feel metal and the merest hint of stubble, but instead feeling her own hair. Teasing out a strand, she could feel it floating down past her shoulders. "This is bizarre, this is bizarre" she muttered to herself. Smoothing down her top over her hips, as she always did when she was nervous, she realised that she was wearing different clothes, denim jeans and a grey t-shirt – in fact, the same clothes she had worn the night she was unplugged.

She was actually getting a little freaked out, so she sat down in one of the red leather chairs simply for the lack of anything else to do. Morpheus sat opposite her, and without realising it, Kiana scooted forwards to the edge of her seat, almost as in anticipation.

"Are you ready to know why I have brought you here?" he asked in his grave, almost ritualistic way.

Kiana nodded without hesitation. She had a sudden flashback to the night that she was unplugged. She had the feeling that this would be the same sort of life changing moment. But all he was going to do was tell her about the Matrix. That couldn't b e life changing, could it?

Kiana was surprisingly restrained when she was told the truth. Image after image flashed at her from the television screen, and Morpheus' smooth, controlled voice drilled itself into her brain. As Morpheus' monologue finished, she slowly nodded, as a way of making it look like she was paying attention, but her mind was reeling, the images burned into her brain and flashing in front of her eyes, like when she had a migraine.

Kiana stood up slowly, feeling like she was no longer in control of her movements. Her legs gave way, and she gripped the lion-head chair for support. The world swam before her.

She blinked, and suddenly she was back on board the Neb, with a sharp, fluid pain in the back of her skull which felt as though someone was probing around in there.

There were people around her, all standing close. Too close. She couldn't breathe without feeling someone else's warm, moist breath on her skin, and she felt as though the air she taking in was dirty. Her muscles clenched, and her stomach churned.

A final fluid motion inside her head, and the shrieking pain stopped. Kiana breathed a sigh of relief, as she saw the spike in Link's hand. Realising that it had just been removed from her head, her stomach felt like rebelling, and Kiana knew that she had to get out of there.

She sat straight up, one hand going to smooth her hair away from her mouth, and then realising that it wasn't there anymore. That, coupled with her new-found knowledge, caused her brain to overload. With her mental mind down, her physical body took over. Kiana bent over and vomited neatly into her lap. After she had finished retching, she flopped back, her strength entirely gone.

"On a scale of one to ten" Kes began. "How bad was that, compared to all the other minds we've freed?"

Link pondered this as he stared at the computer screen. He was meant to be watching the Matrix, and Kes was just generally tidying up, getting cables out of the way so that no-one could trip over them and break a leg. Kiana had been taken down to her room, and was being watched generally by anyone who wasn't doing anything else. "About seven, maybe?"

"Really? I'd say an eight or nine" Kes replied. "Not that many people vomit"

"Neo did" Link replied.

"Really?" Kes asked curiously, grinning. "Somehow can't picture that one"

"But you're trying to?" Link raised a dark eyebrow.

Kes ignored that comment. "How do you know? You've only been the Operator on the Neb since just before I was born, right?"

"Tank told me before he died" Link told her. "He told Zee, rather"

_Tank?_ Kes thought back. Most of what she knew about the crew before she was born came from hacking into the Neb's computer systems and sometimes Zion, but she was more careful with that. She didn't want to give the council any excuse to take her off the ship – technically, she was three years underage.

"Who was Tank?" she asked, giving up.

"Zee's brother" Link informed her.

"I didn't know she had a brother. Or one that was an Operator on the Neb, for that matter"

"She had two. Tank and Bulldozer, but he was just Dozer to everyone" Link explained, gathering up cables with Kes. "Tank was the Operator, and Dozer was the medic and pilot"

Kes nodded, trying to remember if she had heard anything about either of them. "What happened?"

Link straightened up, meeting Kes in the eyes. "Look kid, you probably shouldn't know about some of this shit–"

"Don't 'kid' me" Kes said, irritated. "Besides, either you tell me, or I hack some computer system and get an unreliable, completely biased, substantial amount of bullshit. Your choice"

Her sharp, utterly determined gaze left Link with absolutely no choice. He knew that she'd do it, if only to prove a point. There was a Zion equivalent of the Internet, completely underground and little more than an urban myth, but if the One's daughter was found to be hacking into it, there'd be hell to pay.

Link sighed, looking as though he'd rather be anywhere else than there at that moment. "There was a guy on the crew. Cypher. He'd been freed for a few years, spent all of that time on the Neb. He didn't show it, but he snapped"

Kes nodded. Snapped was a bit of ship argot used to describe someone who couldn't take being outside.

"Thing is, he was a clever guy. Hid it from everyone, but started to hate the Real World. Morpheus most of all. Just couldn't take it. He learned how to read the code and how to manipulate it just a little, so that he could implant his RSI into the Matrix"

"Didn't think that was possible" As much as Kes hated to admit it to herself, she wondered if she could do that, more than she cared about the consequences of something like that.

Link shook his head. "It isn't. He had help from Agents, allegedly. He must've made some sort of deal with them, a way to go back to the Matrix, and he betrayed the whole crew to do it. Killed Dozer. Tried to kill Tank, who killed him, but Cypher took at least another three or four people with him before he went. All people who'd been on the Neb for years, shared food and water with Cypher. And he killed them, just to forget"

"Shit" Kes breathed.

"No kidding" Link's expression shifted to serious. "Hey, Kes, don't tell anyone I told you this, right? It's not really, you know, common knowledge"

"Don't worry, I won't" Kes assured him. She gathered up the last of the cables, storing them neatly with automatic motions, her mind reeling a little. How could she have not known this sort of stuff? Link had been Operating the Nebuchadnezzar for about fifteen years. Granted, it was a little before her lifetime, but this sort of information shouldn't have been hidden for so long. She wondered how many people on board knew. Probably everyone, she reckoned.

_Why does no-one tell me this sort of shit?_

Feeling a new surge of anger, she placed the box of cables down with a little more force than she had intended, and it broke, spilling out the sinuous links everywhere. Kes sighed, forcing herself to take in a deep breath, followed by another, followed by another. Once she felt more in control, she knelt down and began to search for another box. The search proved more difficult than she thought, and by the time she had found another box, all other thoughts had disappeared from her mind, if only temporarily.

Kiana had no idea how long she had been sitting, counting the bolts in the ceiling before there was a small knock on the door.

"Hey" she said with a small smile. "Thought you'd probably need something to drink"

Kiana took the water with a murmur of thanks.

"Are you feeling okay now?" Kes asked with a hint of concern.

Kiana nodded. "Just a little…unsettling"

Kes smiled. "Don't worry. Better to get it out now and deal with it, right?"

Kes' words held a lot of truth, Kiana realised.

"And on the plus side, I think you'll always have that chair to yourself now" Kes added with a spark of humour.

Kiana smiled slightly, trying to stop herself from blushing with embarrassment. She wasn't much of a blusher, but since she was in a completely new world and had just introduced herself to people she had never met before properly by vomiting, she figured now was as good a time as any to start blushing.

"Thanks" she said sincerely, meeting Kes' eyes for the first time, and seeing something not dissimilar to shock there. Like she'd seen something she hadn't expected.

"Um, sure, no problem" Kes said, her hands suddenly fiddling with a hole in her over shirt. Her whole stance changed, as though she was nervous.

_Jesus, what's spooked her so badly? _

"I've got to go, I'll see you later, okay?" Kes finished with a new, suspicious look crossing her face and colliding with another, softer look. Kiana was about to ask her whether she was okay, when Kes left the room quickly, turning the wheel of the door sharply. Kiana couldn't be sure, but she thought she saw a new, more scared look on Kes' face. Like she'd seen a ghost.

* * *

Ten e-cookies if you guess what's up with Kes. And no, she is not an alien human hybrid…(giggles). Please review! 


	7. Chapter VII: Preparation

**scarstar** – Hope I didn't make you wait too long! It's not going to be clear for a while, but I'll keep updating, never fear (hugs). Thanks for reviewing!

**Sydney Andrews** – That is such a scientific theory, and absolutely in sync with the rest of the Matrix universe…and it's not right (malicious laugh). Oh, I'm evil, aren't I? Your theory about the third part of the Trinity was so good though, I may have to work that in somewhere…And I'm so glad you liked my Trin/Kes moment. It's so easy to make it cheesy, but I like writing them, and if I'm doing them well, I'll try to work some more in. Kes' life is kind of lonely…but that's a whole other chapter (hugs). You just keep giving me ideas for chapters! Thanks for reviewing!

**Bagpipes5K2** – Yep, they're definitely going to get close. It just makes my job of writing about them easier…Thanks for reviewing!

Hope you all like this instalment! I'm really tired and swamped with work, so I'd kill for some reviews. Okay, I'm a review whore. Is it really that much of a surprise?

The free e-cookies still stand…I think some of you are getting close, but it's quite complex. Trust me to come up with plots so complicated even I can't keep track of them!

Thanks, as always, to Bagpipes.

* * *

**Chapter VII: Preparation**

Kes had walked out of Kiana's cabin the night before completely wracked and shaken. She fled to her own cabin and flung herself on her bed, staring at the ceiling in her habitual pose as she tried to collect her thoughts. There was one simple concept that kept recurring as she thought back.

_Fuck. _

_Fuck. _

_Buggering shit-arsed fuck. _

She tried to move past that never-ending stream of profanity. , and actually think about the problem at hand.

_Okay, focus, Kes…I didn't even notice her eyes. Not one fucking time. Why didn't I notice this before? _

Kiana's eyes weren't unusual or particularly distinctive. They were just eyes. Windows to the soul.

Dark brown, almost black. Large, expressive, emotive.

The same as her own.

_Oh shit…_

Kiana woke up disorientated – a feeling she'd been getting used to lately. A part of her still expected the first thing she saw to be her own dark blue ceiling, with the hand painted silver stars decorating it. Seeing the blue-grey metal, a little rusty and stained in parts, made her feel even more out of place.

She sat up, and felt like she going to faint as she realised how starved she was. For the first time in the Real World she actually felt hungry.

_Unsurprising, since I lost my stomach contents all over my lap…_

Kiana looked down. She was only wearing her paler blue undershirt now, her dark, navy blue sweater was nowhere to be seen. Her trousers were a little stained with her own vomit, but she was glad, because she couldn't remember how she'd got back to her room after that, and strange people changing her vomit-soaked trousers for her would definitely verge on the side of insane and frankly, a little creepy.

Standing up, she managed to keep herself on her unsteady feet as she tried to stop her head spinning. She felt almost as bad as she had done after her first rock concert, where she had ended up by the speakers for two and a half hours. She hadn't been able to shift her tinnitus for weeks, though she pretended to have it for longer, just so that she had an excuse not to talk to anyone.

Kiana wandered back up onto the main deck of the ship. She remembered the way instinctively, but ...when she reached the cool metal grille of the Core's flooring, Kiana had no idea how she had gotten there. The monitors at the operator's station immediately caught her attention, green Matrix code spilling downwards on almost every screen.

_The characters. . ._

"What is that?" she asked. Kiana's voice was quiet, but Link jumped slightly in his chair.

"Sorry" he apologised. "You get kinda immersed in it"

"What is it?" Kiana asked, staring at the scrolling green lettering.

"The code of the Matrix" he explained. "Sorry, didn't get a chance to introduce myself. I'm Link"

Kiana nodded in a sort of greeting. "So this is the coding of…everything?" She couldn't think of words to describe the Matrix.

"Basically, yeah" Link said vaguely. "Good thing you came up here. Morpheus sent me to find you"

"Find me?" _Like I can go far_ Kiana thought, but wisely didn't say. "Why?"

Link pulled out a handful of small disks, like minidisks, from a box under the counter. Each one had a small label on it, but Kiana couldn't see the writing well enough to read it. "Training" he said simply.

"What for?"

"Everything you're going to need"

"Am I likely to lose my stomach contents in the process?" Kiana asked with reservation.

Link cracked a smile, but shook his head.

"Then I'm game" Kiana said. "What happened? Do I have to read some really heavy manual or something?"

"Little quicker than that"

Kiana was lead to one of the chairs, and she tried not to wince as the jack was thrust into her head. To her surprise, she didn't end up in the Construct. It appeared to be like switching a laptop on, you could have it working without being connected to the Internet.

Suddenly, her brain was flooded with information, it was almost too much, and she thrashed around as it invaded her senses. It wasn't that she couldn't cope with it, it was her body aching to try some of the moves and martial arts techniques she was seeing flash before her eyes.

Suddenly, she was back on the ship.

"What the–" she began.

"Intense huh?" Link replied. "Ready for some more?"

"Why not?" Kiana replied, and felt information force itself into her brain.

Kiana's eyes struggled to focus as she came out of the fog, partly because her mind was struggling to cope with the transition between the limbo of uploading information and the Real World, and partly because she had one killer headache.

She groaned slightly, sitting up as she did so, as a primal instinct told her to curl up. The jack in the back of her head prevented that, but her whole body felt like it wanted to curl up and shut out the rest of the world.

"Kiana?" she heard a familiar voice ask. "Are you alright?"

She hadn't noticed Morpheus in the room, but, to be frank, she wasn't up to sensing much at the moment. Her head felt like a knife was pushing through her temples, and the back of her head, around the bio-port physically ached.

Kiana started to uncurl, sitting up more normally and trying to appear as though her head wasn't splitting. Surreptitiously, she placed a hand to her bio-port, around the jack, and gently rubbed the skin, trying to relieve the pain.

"Kiana?" Morpheus asked again.

The pain was going, diminishing.

"I'm fine" she lied. "What's next?"

With a shock, she noticed that Morpheus was sitting, waiting, in one of the chairs that seemed to resemble dentist's chairs from hell. He looked across the half-circle of chairs to meet her eyes.

"Are you ready to put what you have learned into practice?"

The pain was gone now. Kiana barely even remembered it. She nodded, expecting to get more of an explanation, but all that happened was that Morpheus lay back, Link put the jack in his head, and then turned back to the Operating station.

"What's happening?" she asked Link.

"All self-explanatory" he said cryptically. "Have fun now"

"Oh I will" Kiana said with biting sarcasm, lying back down.

She entered the now-familiar construct coma, but it was a different place from last time. This place was artistic, light and airy, decorated in a very natural, wooden style, though it was sparse and spacious. It was definitely Oriental, like a dojo.

Kiana looked down. Her pale grey gi and loose pants, bordered in black, were a perfect fit. Not so long that she could get tangled in a sleeve or trip over a hem, but not so tight that she couldn't stretch. It struck her that these were clothes designed for movement.

Morpheus was wearing similar attire, and looked very much at ease in this place. He started to explain.

"This is a sparring program, similar to the programmed reality of the Matrix. Consider this your first lesson"

Morpheus assumed a fighting stance.

"Attack me"

"You are angry with me"

Kiana, still trying to get her breath back and at the same time convince herself that none of this was real, looked up. Somehow Morpheus always had a way of surprising her with the way he said things.

"Um…maybe" she supplied. She couldn't bring herself to lie to Morpheus. She was angry. She was always angry. Anger gave her support, kept her moving. She always felt the simmer of rage beneath her skin, and now, after feeling like a deity with the new knowledge inside her head and then getting beaten time after time, that anger was close to the surface.

"It's alright. It's natural"

"What's natural about it?" Kiana asked, rubbing away a small streak of blood at the side of her mouth. She'd, honestly, been enjoying herself in a weird way, because of the exhilarating release that came with being able to do the things she could now do, but she'd been getting increasingly annoyed with Morpheus, who had been able to block every single punch she'd made and deflected every kick with five of his own. "I feel better though" she said, surprising herself with what she said, and the honesty in it.

"Good, good. Anger is a gift, but it is a heavy one"

Kiana raised a pale blonde eyebrow. Morpheus smiled, and called to the ceiling.

"Link, load the jump program"

Link nodded, even though he knew Morpheus wasn't there consciously, and rummaged through the box of tiny disks kept under the Operating station, looking for the jump program disk. It seemed heavier than the others, partly because it was one of the oldest disks there, and partly because of the anticipation attached to it. There was always some sort of general wondering whenever a new recruit was taken through it, questioning whether this one would be able to make the first jump.

Kes came up on deck, determinedly watching the coding of the Construct even though she knew the image translator screen was right next to her.

"How's she doing?" she asked Link, sliding into her usual seat beside him.

"Good. She just fought Morpheus"

"And?"

Link shrugged. "She's doing okay"

Kes leaned in, and watched for a second. "How many disks did she run through?"

Link shrugged. "About thirty. Why?"

Kes shook her head. Most people had to run through over seventy disks to get up to a decent level. Thirty was nothing. "She should have taken more"

"Kes, you know as well as I do that you can't force the mind–"

"But she's eighteen. Her mind should be ready for the lot, not just thirty disks"

"She's eighteen?" Link repeated in surprise. "Shit. I thought she was younger"

"So what, you stopped her, or she couldn't take any more?" Kes knew she was being annoying and pedantic, but she had to know, for reasons that felt strange even to her.

"No, she really couldn't take anymore" Link replied, his mind now occupied with loading the program.

Kes watched the code with narrowed eyes, feeling a deep sense of suspicion come over her.

Kiana stared at Morpheus in disbelief. The man had told her a lot of things recently, all of which she had accepted, even if she had lost her stomach contents in the process, but this was a joke.

"You're telling me, I should be able to jump this gap" she stated. "You're telling me I even should try?"

Morpheus nodded. Kiana gave him what she knew was her 'alright-crazy-man' look.

"You have to let go of all that anger, Kiana" Morpheus explained to her. "Anything that will weigh you down, you must release. You must let go of everything. You must empty yourself to free your mind"

Morpheus ran deftly to the edge with a lightening movement that Kiana didn't see coming. He jumped, and sailed through the air, his coat billowing out after him. He somersaulted once, and landed on the rooftop across the street.

Kiana raised her eyebrows.

"Shit"

She looked helplessly up. The blue sky beckoned, clear and calm. She took a deep breath, focusing on that blue, and ran. She was consciously aware of the sound of her feet on the concrete, and as she focused on that she lost her concentration on the sky.

She knew she was falling before her body could properly take in what was happening to her. She knew that she was going to hit the street

She struck the concrete hard, but it merely buckled gracefully under the pressure and threw her back up.

On her back, she heard a small sound as Morpheus landed next to her. He stood over her, watching her attempt to move.

"Sorry" she whispered, her body feeling broken, and her voice coming out like a cracked undertone.

"Everyone falls the first time" Morpheus informed her. That information didn't make Kiana feel any better though. "If you never knew failure, how would you know success?"

Kiana looked up at him from her position on the floor, her body aching, but the higher part of her brain already detaching itself from that, and she brought herself to an upright position.

"With difficulty?" she hazarded, and then realised how silly that sounded. She was actually being serious though; she didn't know. It sounded like the question about whether she was awake or asleep. She hadn't realised for a while that there was no answer.

_There should be an answer_ she thought to herself as Morpheus called Link to order him to jack them out.

* * *

Okay, I do not like the ending to this chapter, but I couldn't think of a better one.

Part of the dialogue between Morpheus and Kiana is from the original Matrix script, from Neo's training. Some bits were interesting, so I used them. Does it work?

Please review!


	8. Chapter VIII: Evolution

**Sydney Andrews** – Definitely more parent/child interaction coming then. I'm really open to requests for this fic, so give me the ideas and I'll try to work them in. Re; Kes' awful mouth, I think she probably picked it up around the ship, because in the movies, there is a lot of swearing, and Kes seems like the type who would pick it up quickly. She's pretty rebellious, and also, at the moment, she wants to try and seem older than she is, and not be thought of as the 'young one'. You picked up on something I hadn't mentioned actually, that in this scenario, Kiana is like the 'Neo', as in, she's the one who's newly exposed to this world, and Kes is the 'Trinity' who knows it all back to front, and also notices the things that Kiana doesn't. The Seventh One idea is really interesting, but I've set this story after M1, as though M2 and 3 haven't happened. I hadn't thought about maybe Trin and Neo having more of a connection to Kiana, that's definitely something to work in there. I really feel like I should credit you for all these ideas you give me! And yes, there is an Oracle chapter coming up, but not for a while. I'm really looking forward to writing it actually :) Penultimately (man this is a long response!) there will be some hints about childhood soon, especially Kiana's. She's got a lot of baggage. Finally (whew!), as always, thanks for reviewing! And for giving me such a lot to mull over (hugs)

**Neo** – Thank you! I'm definitely writing it – just try and stop me!

**scarstar** – Thanks! I think those kinds of details are interesting, they make a character 3-D. I love that line too, btw :) Thanks for reviewing!

**LadyOfThieves **– Ah, I knew you would succumb to the Matrix side before long…And yes, you and Katie did inspire the alright-crazy-person look. I use it daily in fact, but you helped to create it! I love that sentence. It's the sort of thing I say to my mum whenever she gives away too much information! I need to speak to you about doing something later this week, any thoughts? Oh, also, a dojo is a practice area for martial arts. You know the bit in the first film, where Neo and Morpheus spar in the oriental looking room? That's a dojo. Talk to you soon!

I'll keep this brief, because I am really ill. And it's half term. So at any other time I'd be missing school. But now, I can't do anything fun and I've got homework to do. This really stinks. Reviews make me feel better though…hint hint. Because I am so subtle (!)

Hope you like the chapter! Thanks again to **Bagpipes** for all her help.

* * *

**Chapter VIII: Evolution**

Kiana woke up in amazing amounts of pain. Despite the fact that it wasn't real, most of the muscles along her body ached and she felt stiffer than she had done in a long time.

She'd quite literally passed out after her session. She'd summoned up the strength to get back to her room, and then she'd collapsed face down. When she'd woken up, she honestly thought she was being suffocated until she realised she had her face pressed into the blanket.

There was no way to tell the time. This annoyed Kiana, as she always liked to know the small details. But it appeared they were without time, timeless.

Kiana wandered through the bowels of the ship, just to try and get her stiff limbs working again. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but it was freezing, she was convinced her echoing footsteps would disturb someone and she was convinced that she was just getting stiffer.

_How do you even get cramp when you've just had a virtual workout? _

Too confusing. Kiana's brain couldn't cope with that at the moment.

Eventually, she climbed up onto the main deck, thinking it might be empty. No such luck. As Kiana climbed up the ladder to the main deck, Kes, who was sitting at the Operating station, turned around to see who the intruder was.

"Hey" she said softly. "Couldn't sleep?"

Kiana shook her head.

"Thought you'd be shattered after training" There was something strange in Kes' tone, almost suspicious, but her face and voice were neutral. Kiana mentally shook off her reservations, but replied guardedly.

"I slept a little" she supplemented, her voice as impartial and expressionless as Kes' own.

Kes turned back to the screens, using the scrolling code as an excuse to look away. Something about Kiana disturbed her, and whilst their similar eye colour and stature was part of the reason, the greater reason was simply that there was something bizarre about her whole presence, something unnerving.

She tried not to think about that and concentrated on the falling green code as she pretended not to notice Kiana watching both her and the screens with interest.

"How do you read the code?" Kiana asked.

"Slowly and painfully" Kes said with an unintentional touch of humour. "At least at first. It takes a while to get fluent"

Kiana gave Kes another glance. She always seemed, at least to Kiana, very much in control, very confident, very mature, but right then, she looked so much younger as she sat with her tousled hair falling over her face and her ill-fitting threadbare clothes hanging loosely off of her slight frame. She looked even younger than fifteen at that moment.

"You must have been studying it for years" she commented.

"Since I was five" Kes remarked carelessly.

"Shit" Kiana said, almost involuntarily. "Sorry, I just can't imagine having to leave the matrix at five years old"

"I didn't" Kes informed her. She stretched out her arms, pulling back the sleeve to expose the skin. "See? No plugs"

"So you were born here then?"

"Not quite here. Zion"

"What?"

"The last city of the human race" Kes explained somewhat distractedly, as her eyes were fixated on the screens and the falling code.

"Where is it?"

"Beneath all of these sewers–"

Kiana looked blank, so Kes decided to backtrack slightly.

"What we're flying through right now are the sewers of the Megacities of the world. When the A.I machines and the humans fought, everything got destroyed in the war. Morpheus told you about that, right?" Kiana nodded. "Well, Zion's way beneath these sewers, towards the mantle of the earth. It's a lot warmer than on ship"

Kes stopped there, and Kiana was itching to ask more, but she sensed something in Kes' manner that told her that the subject was closed. Instead, she turned to another burning question.

"So why did you join the ship at five?"

"You met Trinity and Neo, right?"

Kiana nodded, though she was thrown off by the change in conversation. What did that have to do with anything?

"Yeah. So?"

"They're my parents" Kes stated matter-of-factly. "So I came with them onto the ship"

"Was that hard?"

Kes shrugged. "Not really. I like it here. It's kind of peaceful on these ships. And at least there's some space to breathe"

That made little sense to Kiana, who found the ship almost unbearably small at times, and was still adjusting to the ambience of having the crew around her the whole time.

"What, this is less crowded than Zion?"

Kes wrinkled her nose, finally pushing the headset off and spinning her chair to face Kiana directly. "Not really, but everyone's much more interdependent. As a ship, you've got to fend for yourself. In Zion, it's a lot more community-like. It's kind of…I don't know, irritating, I guess" She gave a slightly bitter smile. "But don't ask me, I'm kind of biased"

"Why?" Kiana knew she was prying, but she was sincerely interested, and Kes didn't seem to mind too much.

"You know I said that Neo and Trinity were my parents?"

"Yes"

"Well, they're kind of important" Her voice was completely neutral, no tone of any sort in it at all. "And in Zion we all get a lot of attention" Kes turned away for a second, tapped in a few keys, her eyes barely flickering down to the keyboard as she did so, then turned back to face Kiana. "You'll get it too"

"Why?"

"The Zionites way outnumber the crews. There are like twelve ships, with maybe five or six people on each one, right? So that's at most, possibly seventy or so people on the ships. There are almost a million in Zion. And the ships often don't dock for months at a time. So when a ship docks, it's kind of rare. And the Nebuchadnezzar in particular is pretty special"

Kiana was starting to notice that Kes rarely met her eyes. Every time she tried, Kes looked away, and she looked back at the screen, though she didn't do anything active like typing.

Kiana reached up to brush the hair away from her face, a habitual motion with her, but instead her fingers encountered the hat – an old, ragged object, but it covered her baldness, and she could kid herself that she had hair underneath it this way. Kiana wasn't particularly into self-delusion, but her hair was like her identity. Without it, she felt particularly alien. If she could kid herself that she still had hair, it gave her confidence. Shallow, she knew, but it was something that was important to her. She practically hadn't taken it off once.

"Why?" she asked, feeling ignorant and untutored, but pretty much beyond caring at this point. Kes didn't seem to like her all that much, and so if she bugged her a little more about things, it probably wouldn't matter.

"Why what?" Kes asked distractedly, her eyes back on the screen.

"Why is the Nebuchadnezzar so special?" Kiana repeated with patience.

Kes didn't answer for a second, and suddenly started typing at the keyboard, stabbing at the keys. "Shit!" she exclaimed, her eyes following lines of code whilst her fingers moved.

"What's wrong?" Kiana asked, a little surprised by Kes' sudden action.

"Go get Morpheus, now!" Kes ordered. "Tell him Niobe's Inside and the code's going haywire"

"Won't he be sleeping or something?"

"He basically doesn't. Go, now!"

Kiana got up and left, exiting the room swiftly. As the clatter of her boots on the metal grille faded, Kes' deep brown eyes scanned the scene and her fingers responded almost instinctively, zooming in, out, rotating, everything possible to try and get a better idea of what was going on. All the time she followed the figure wandering through the Matrix.

Suddenly, her monitor screen flickered, and died.

"Come on!" Kes snarled with urgency and desperation, hitting the monitor with the flat of her hand. The impact seemed to stimulate the machine, and it flared back into life, but she was in a completely different place from before, when the computer had died.

"Piece of shit" she seethed through gritted teeth as she frantically tried to recover her position. What she was reading was the coding for a small settlement in Ghana, when what she'd wanted was to hack into the Megacity. It was never a smooth hack, and right now she couldn't be arsed to fight her way through the layers upon layers of coding that surrounded the Megacity.

But she didn't have a choice. There was no way to regain the ground she'd lost.

Cursing under her breath, she began the hack. Because the Matrix was always evolving, it always took different codes and methods to try and scan the major cities. Though Kes was a quick study, it was different every time, and as each attempt she made was rejected, her expletives got louder and more inventive. No hack had ever been so hard before.

A clatter of feet behind her informed her that Kiana was back. Morpheus always made virtually no sound, as though he didn't want to disturb the ship.

"What is it?" Morpheus asked, looking at the screen over Kes' shoulder.

"Niobe" Kes said, feeling sorry for him. They were both practically part of her family, and she knew how frustrating it was for them, being on separate ships and having to get news through the Matrix code. "She was Inside, I swear. But then the code got all nuts and she disappeared. Like, literally. And then the computer crashed and it ended up outside the mainframe" She tried another combination of codes and emitted another obscenity under her breath as it was again rejected. "The code's warped. I've never had this much trouble getting in before"

"Let me try" Morpheus said, and Kes passed him the headset. She moved backwards, towards Kiana, who was standing a way back from the monitor and looking like she was having trouble keeping up with the rapid flow of dialogue that had just taken place.

"I don't get the problem" Kiana whispered to Kes. She was, again, feeling like she was asking an obvious question, but there was no way she could deduce what was going on from the meagre information she had collected since she was unplugged, and frankly, she had no way to escape the 'newbie' tattoo on her forehead.

"We can look at bits of the Matrix simply by reading the code" Kes explained softly, watching Morpheus work. "But in order to look at the more sensitive parts of the Matrix, the Megacities and other, protected areas, we have to hack through the mainframe. When the monitor, crashed, we lost the hack. But we should be able to get back in…" Her voice trailed off, and her face was covered with a pensive expression.

Morpheus moved away from the console.

"Any luck?" Kes asked

Morpheus shook his head. "The code is changing. Something is wrong. We need to get everyone here. Kiana, can you get the rest of the crew?"

Kiana nodded, and left quickly. Though her grasp of the situation wasn't deep or detailed, she understood urgency, and now there was plenty of it in the air.

"Kes, we need to contact the Logos"

Kes picked up the headset again, starting to make the call, as Morpheus returned to trying to hack the mainframe.

"Operator, and if that's the captain we're looking for, man, are you ever late"

"Sparks, it's Kes. Are you following Niobe?"

"We were, but then the mainframe got frosty on us, and our hack dissolved"

"Same as. Something does not want us watching the Megacity"

"You don't think it was coincidence?"

"Not really. Seems too convenient to be coincidence. And I didn't think machines believed in coincidences. When did you last speak to Niobe?"

"Just before we lost the monitor. We were about to try and set up an exit, but then the connection cut out"

"Why was she in the Megacity anyway?"

"Some crazy mission that was going to risk everyone's life again. Including mine, and how is that fair?"

"It never is. Call us if you get news"

Kes hung up, sliding the headset down her head so that it hung around her neck. "The same thing happened to them" she reported to Morpheus. "We've all lost the mainframe. I don't get it. How can they do that?"

"Do what?" Neo asked, coming up behind his daughter with Trinity, Link, Elysia and Kiana following.

"We're frozen out of the Megacity. Something's keeping us out" Kes explained quickly. "The Logos is in the same situation, but worse because Niobe's Inside"

"Holy–" Link began, looking at the code. "That's never happened before"

"Yeah, the corruption's pretty bad" Kes commented.

"Yeah, but have you seen this?" Link slid into the seat in front of the monitor that Morpheus had vacated. He pointed, his fingers running down the trailing lines of code. "It's not just the top layer of code. It's all the way down, running right down to the bottom layer"

"My God" Elysia breathed. "Something's changing. They're changing the Matrix, right from the core"

"But why?" Trinity asked. "What's so important that they've got to go back and change the most basic lines of code?"

Kiana listened to the talk around her with interest, but also a cold chill down the back of her spine. There was something eerie about all of this, and the coldness of the ship didn't help. She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to catch more information from the talk going on around her.

"Neo, can you see what's happening to the Matrix?" Morpheus asked, looking thoughtful.

Neo leaned in a little, just so that he could see the green phosphorescent screen more clearly. He stared at it for a moment, concentrating, his eyes flickering over the screen as he took in the code. Finally, he stood back, shaking his head. "Nothing's apparently different. Everything looks the same, even if it doesn't read the same"

"No offence Neo, but that's impossible" Link stated. "How can they change the very make-up of the code and it not show up?"

"Unless…" Morpheus began. "Maybe this isn't a change in the Matrix taking place, only a change in the code"

"Not following you" Elysia put in.

"What if this is a change in the way the Matrix is programmed, without changing the fabric of reality in the Matrix?"

"That would mean…"

"A new code" Neo mused. "We're locked out until we learn the rules"

There was a moment of silence, on the deck, until the shrill ringing of an alarm shattered it.

"Shit" Kes swore under her breath, so as not to be detected by her parents.

"Trinity" Morpheus called, going towards the cockpit. Trinity followed quickly, and within a few seconds the ship was powering up.

"Plasma rifles?" Elysia asked Neo, who nodded, and they ran down to the lower level, where the ship's small battalion of arms was kept.

"What is that alarm?" Kiana wondered out loud.

"Sentinels, squiddies. They're machines designed to seek out our ships and destroy them" Kes explained as she ran over to the other Operating station. "Link, I got this one"

Link nodded, and left the station, going down below as well. Kiana suddenly felt surplus to requirements. "What do we need to do?"

Without warning, the ship suddenly jolted and jerked into life; Kiana almost falling over because of the sudden movement.

"Okay, I know this is a really shit time for explanations, but I need some as soon as possible" she exclaimed.

"We only have one weapon against the squiddies; the EMP, but it would knock out every electrical signal within a certain range. We'd be unable to fly until we fixed it, and there's every chance more would come whilst we were grounded" Kes explained, twisting a small key so that a button on the Operating desk glowed red. "We usually try to outrun them. Or blow their machine A.I brains out"

Neo, Elysia and Link returned from the lower decks, each clutching something that Kiana could tell was a gun, though she'd never seen anything like it before.

Now that it had started, the ship moved smoothly, like an elevator going up to the top floor. Kiana was beginning to feel distinctly uneasy, but she tried to ignore the feeling, and instead gripped the console as hard and as unobtrusively as she could.

"What are the guns for?" she asked.

"Just in case" Link replied.

"Quiet!" Morpheus' voice came through the intercom, ordering in that tone that no-one could refuse. The order made Kiana itch to ask another question, but she instead tapped her first and second finger rhythmically into the flesh of her thumb, pressing them determinedly deeper every time she felt inclined to speak or even move. She was well past the 'maybe if I pinch myself, I'll wake up' phase, but there was a tiny part of her that hoped that was what would happen.

There was an air of tension in the cabin, so strained it was practically tangible. There didn't really seem to be that much point in staying quiet, as they were apparently being pursued by giant squids, but everyone in the cabin seemed to be waiting, listening for something. Though what it was, Kiana wasn't sure.

It was almost a minute before she suddenly heard it. The scraping of steel, the clunk of something heavy landing and an ominous boom as it moved. It was like there was a giant metallic spider climbing on the roof, surrounding them.

The ship twisted suddenly, and Kiana was thrown to one side of the ship, slamming her side into the steel wall. The whole right side of her body felt broken, like the doll she'd had when she was six, until she'd thrown it out of the window of their apartment on the twenty-third floor. She felt like that doll; broken and yet visibly unaffected. Though, just by guessing, she'd have a huge purple bruise there tomorrow.

She could hear more of them latching onto the roof, metal claws punching through metal. The sound was deafening, and as something tugged on the roof above her, it sounded like pulling multiple plasters off raw, unhealed skin.

Suddenly, red light filled her vision, a strange contrast to the dark blue metal. Cold air rushed in from the hole to fill the ship, and Kiana felt like she was made of ice. She couldn't remember being so cold before. It felt like all the life had been sucked out of her.

A shot from one of the plasma rifles, a beam of creamy light shot out and almost hit the monster. Key word being almost. It shot past the sentinel and headed out into the darkness behind it. Kiana couldn't even tell who had shot it. She was transfixed by the light, and the eyes of the sentinel. Her fear was fixing her to the spot, freezing her. And yet, there was something else mixed in with the fear. There was a sense of curiosity as well. She almost felt like she was watching the whole scene play out from high above, and the sarcastic voice in mind was telling her how unbelievable it was.

That's why she wasn't doing anything. She didn't believe it was happening.

And then the red light blinded her, created darkness for her with the purity of it's light. It got more intense, it got closer…and then there was nothing at all.

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Ooh…now we hit some of the action part. And some more plot stuff comes into play. But mainly I wrote this because I was bored and wanted to get to the action stuff faster :)

Please review!


	9. Chapter IX: Attack

**Sydney Andrews – **I love that line from Kes! It made me laugh while I was writing it, so I thought it might make someone else laugh. Yeah, I think action stuff isn't my forte, but hopefully I'll improve! That's an interesting point about the dynamics of Zion, I guess it's one of those things that's open to interpretation. And Kes might have it wrong, after all, she hasn't been back there for years. Morpheus and Niobe will be explaining their relationship in a later chapter (I'm giving them some screen-time), and Ghost will be in it if I feel I can write him well enough – I've only got the movies to go on, I've never played Enter the Matrix or anything – so we'll see. It might be kinda cool to give Kes an uncle to torment :) And I'm ashamed to say that I haven't finished reading The Last Exile yet, but what I read, I loved. I'm really adoring Rorie – maybe we should do a crossover with Kes and Rorie! I'm really glad you liked my Kiana and Kes conversation – there's going to be a lot of them! – and thanks for reviewing!

**Bagpipes5K2 **– It was kinda cruel of me to send you the chapter and not tell you what happens, wasn't it:) Thanks for reviewing!

**scarstar **– Thanks! It's going to be pretty important later…but I can't say anymore :) Or I could, but I won't. Btw, I've got a new MOPI story up, and I'd really love some feedback from you. As with all my stuff, I don't trust whether it's good or not, so I'd love to know your feelings on the subject…okay, enough shameless advertising. Thanks for reviewing!

**Arhazivory **– Yeah, I think the site's having some problems, because I couldn't upload this chapter for ages, and I'm kinda glad, because if I had, I would have missed getting your lovely review! You really hit the nail on the head with Kes and Kiana. I think you're the first person to get it actually! I'm definitely writing, so I look forward to hearing from you!

I would have updated this sooner, but the site seemed to be having some problems. But I'm here now, right? However, the next update will probably be in two weeks because I'm way too busy with art coursework at the moment – I have my exam in four weeks, and I have to do, on average, about a page of quality work a day. On top of everything else. So I'm a little stressed. But I may miraculously find the time to update next week, so keep a look out.

Onto the actual chapter!

Thanks to **Bagpipes** for betaing.

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**Chapter IX: Attack**

Kes saw Kiana fall, but she couldn't do anything about it. There were too many people in between herself and Kiana, and she needed to be listening out for Morpheus' call. She knew the delicate position that they were in; they couldn't use the EMP until they were on the ground, otherwise they'd fall, but they'd never set down safely whilst covered in sentinels. In short, they were screwed. She had no idea what they'd do, but Morpheus would find a way, as he always did. Until then, she had to wait for his call to use the EMP.

Though she'd never admit it, Kes was scared. Now that the roof was breached, anything could happen.

A sentinel wrapped its tentacles around the jagged tear in the roof, and its spider-like body squatted over the ship. Numerous metal feelers reached into the ship, feeling around. Kes could see the glint of a red eye staring down at her. A tentacle swung her way.

A flash of light from a gun, and the sentinel slumped on the roof, dead weight.

"I have got to start keeping a plasma rifle under here" she muttered. Temptation overcoming her, she flicked a hanging tentacle, just to check that it was actually dead. It was, thankfully, but there were still the other few hundred to worry about.

As she ship turned, the lifeless sentinel slid off the ship's roof, to be replaced with another. _We're fucked_ was Kes' cheerful, optimistic thought.

An electric beam from the plasma rifle zoomed past her, hitting one of sentinels. As it passed her, the cold fire from the beam was so intense that it felt like the skin on her arm was being burnt off. Kes moved around a few feet to the right, clutching her arm tightly.

"Are you okay?" she could hear her father call to her.

"Fine" she lied, biting back tears. _Tears are childish_, she told herself. _I have to forget the pain. Pretend it isn't there. _

Another huge tearing sound could be heard; a sentinel had torn up another part of the roof. More red glaring eyes could be seen, and the sound of lasers was deafening. Even if Morpheus screamed at her to switch on EMP, she wouldn't have been able to hear him.

Even more frigid air rushed in. The ship was going fast, but the sentinels had a good grip on the ship, and they weren't going to be thrown off easily. Kes had no idea how more were behind the ship, and how many more were waiting. If they blew the EMP early, the remaining sentinels, just out of EMP range, would rush in and pick them off easily.

"Kes!" Someone was screaming at her, a woman, so it had to be Elysia. "Switch on the EMP!"

"No!" she could hear Link reply. "Are you crazy?" He fired his rifle, killing a sentinel before returning to the argument. "If we blow it now, the ship'll fall!"

Internally, Kes was torn. She glanced at her father, who was wielding the gun as effectively as possible, but there were too many of them. Unless she blew the EMP, they were going to be overwhelmed.

_Why did I ever take this crazy as hell job?_

Her fingers hovered over the EMP switch. If she did it now…

Suddenly, a blast like a shockwave hit Kes, and the force of it chilled her to her bones. Her knuckles tightened on the Operating desk as the waves continued. When they receded, she thought the worst was over.

She was wrong.

The stop in motion was devastating, and for a moment, her body didn't register the fact that the ship was no longer moving forwards. By the time it had caught up, her stomach was flying through her throat as the ship plummeted to earth.

The ship probably only fell for a few seconds, but it felt like years to Kes. All motion ceased apart from her stomach turning and threatening to burst out of her mouth if she unclenched her jaw. Time itself seemed to stop.

Until the ship hit the ground. The effect was so sharp that Kes was thrown off her chair and onto the floor.

"Dad!" she cried as she fell, the impact rattling through her bones. Her jaw smacked the ground and she felt like someone had kicked her squarely in the middle of her face. Her already injured arm now hurt more than ever. The pain numbed her senses for a moment, and she lay there on the floor, unable to move as her nerves slowly and painfully returned.

Even though she was preoccupied with her pain, Kes could still hear something strange. It sounded like metal hail (something she had never experienced, but she knew how it was formed, simply from reading the Matrix code), but far bigger hail. As each metal thud landed on the ship, the whole structure of it shook.

Without warning the room shifted into pitch darkness. Kes looked upwards with blind eyes, looking towards the gap in the roof where the sentinel had torn through. She should have been able to see something, even if it was just the scrap yard of the sewers, but there was nothing. Only random chinks of light falling down through small gaps. From her vantage point, she could crane her neck to get a different perspective, and from her new point of view she could see that the gaps were small slits between tentacles lying haphazardly on each other.

It struck her then; the sentinels were falling down. Dead.

_But how…?_

"Kes? Kes, are you okay?" Her father's concerned voice brought her back to reality.

"Just peachy" Kes tried to reply, but her mouth was full of blood. Having no other alternative, she spat it out. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she sat up, feeling her father's supportive hand on her arm. "I'm fine" she tried to say convincingly. "What was that?"

"No idea" Neo replied, helping Kes to stand. He could just about see that her face and most of her shirt was covered in blood, but there was no time to worry about that. "Where is everyone?"

"I'm here" Elysia called, somewhere to the left of Kes. "And Link's next to me, I think he's unconscious"

Footsteps sounded to Kes' right, she could hear them and feel the vibrations they sent through the metal grille.

"Neo? Kes?" Trinity called from the entrance to the cockpit, blinded by the darkness of the ship.

"We're here" Kes could hear her father's deep, slightly hoarse voice say. Her mother's confident steps signalled her approach, and Kes quickly found herself cradled within her mother's protective arm.

"Not the face" Kes winced, pulling away. She could feel cool delicate fingers on her face, and she tried not to flinch.

"Is everyone alright?" Morpheus asked.

"Link's out cold, and I don't know where Kiana is" Elysia reported, the creaking of the metal grille reporting her movements.

"Kiana's over there somewhere, I saw her fall over when we still had light" Kes said, her voice sounding forlorn in the darkness.

In the darkness, some distance away from Kes, she heard a groggy groan. "What happened?" Link asked, sounding like he was in some pain.

"We don't know" Morpheus said. "Kes, did the EMP blow out?"

"Meaning, did I push it prematurely?" Kes replied with a sarcastic edge in her voice. "The answer is no; I did not push it prematurely and neither did it blow out. Whatever happened, I don't think it was a failure and it sure as hell wasn't my fault"

"Then what?" Elysia asked.

Suddenly, there was the sound of metal outside, crunching on the ground. Without anyone saying it, silence settled over the cabin, as everyone within strained to hear what was going on outside. Kes felt her father grip his rifle slightly tighter as the footsteps grew closer. The tension was so thick it could almost be seen hanging in the room, looming over them all.

Scraping against the hull. Footsteps. The shifting of metal.

The chinks of light in the roof of the hull got bigger. It was like someone was peeling off a bandage, and with each layer that was removed, more light flooded into the room. Only it wasn't layers of bandages, it was the splayed out tentacles of a sentinel, covering the gap. Kes could see that clearly now, especially the one that hung down, resting on the chair where she had been sitting. She shivered involuntarily, thinking about it.

Elysia and Neo both had their guns pointed towards the hole. No-one said anything, and if possible, the tension grew even thicker.

The gap in the roof was cleared, and it was clear that it was the work of human hands. Shadowy figures, too far back for the crew of the Neb sitting in the dark to make out, moved, and one figure climbed through and jumped down, their boots making a clanking sound and reverbing across the floor. They flicked on a slim torch, and shone it around, illuminating each face. The light finally fell on the guns, ready and waiting to be used.

"You can put that shit away, we're the rescue party"

Kes could have cried with relief. She knew the owner of the clipped, authoritative voice. It was Niobe, captain of the Logos and her aunt by adoption. Though at that moment, she could have even been Commander Lock and she would have been happy to see him.

"Christ, you took a beating" Niobe breathed incredulously as she looked around the battered remains of the Neb. "Is everyone okay?"

"Kiana's out cold on the floor somewhere" Kes said vaguely. They had landed pretty hard, and Kiana would have been in no state to hold onto something unless she miraculously regained consciousness. She could have been flung anywhere.

"Got her" Ghost said. By the uneven light from the torches, Kes could just about see that Kiana was lying face down on the floor.

Torchlight suddenly flashed in her face, and she had to squint to see anything properly.

"Kes, what happened to your face?" she heard Niobe ask as she extended a hand to help her up.

"It's not too bad" Kes replied, knowing that the usual fuss would kick up once it was clear how injured she was. Was it because of her parentage, or because she was still a kid in most people's eyes? She couldn't tell. She only knew it drove her mad.

"Come on. We ought to head back to the Logos and get you guys fixed up" Niobe ordered, starting to lead the way back through the hole in the hull. Kes followed, propelled by her parents, and Morpheus went ahead to talk to Niobe.

It was freezing outside, and even though the sewers were dim, the light hurt Kes' eyes. She hadn't realised how much she hurt. It was as though her body was screaming at her for ignoring the pain earlier.

Looking at everyone else, she could see that most had gotten off lightly compared to her. Link seemed to be okay, apart from a small cut on his head, and Elysia was much the same, only her palms were scraped raw by the fall, and she was limping. Her parents were both fine apart from a few cuts and bruises, and Morpheus wasn't visibly injured. She knew from experience that if he was injured, he certainly wouldn't show it, and worry about his crew first. Kes wished she could do the same. At the moment, she was trying to tell herself that the wetness on her face was just her eyes watering from the pain in her smashed nose.

Yeah right.

She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to keep warm, even though the movement made the burn on her arm ache even more. Most of the time, her work on the ship was boring. No getting around that. Most of the time, the monotony threatened to kill her, and she ached for something more exciting. However, whenever the exciting things came along, they usually came with a fifty-fifty chance of dying. That was why she always thought she could talk them round on the whole transfer thing – they'd let her join a ship at five. She'd survived this long. If they didn't intend for her ever to go on a ship, why was it the only home she could remember, the one she'd spent two-thirds of her life in?

Kes knew that it was likely that she'd watch her parents die sooner rather than later. She couldn't quite picture them dying of natural causes, when she was older and had lived life long enough to experience death. In many ways it was cruel, a child having to grasp the fact that her parents were probably going to die in an artificial world that she could have no part in.

When she was about seven, she had a recurring nightmare. She would dream that she woke up suddenly, in her usual bed on the ship, but instead of the grey-blue colours of the Real World, everything was tinted red. She ran through the ship, looking for someone, but everywhere was deserted. Finally, she'd gone back into her room, but instead of it being empty, it had been filled with corpses. Her parents, Morpheus, Niobe, Ghost…everyone that was connected to her in some way. In the dream she'd screamed and screamed and screamed, but when she suddenly jumped awake for real, she wouldn't utter a sound. Instead, she would sit there and shiver and stare at the wall until it was a reasonable time for her to wake up. It got so bad that she had once stayed up for almost twenty-four hours straight just to avoid sleeping. This went on for almost three months, until a newbie, Spider, had died whilst they were Inside. Somehow, seeing death, even from a distance, had cured her. She never had the nightmare again, and she never told anyone about it.

Maybe it was because every time someone died, she felt like crying with relief that it wasn't someone she loved.

Kes forced herself to move in sync with her mother's rhythmical footsteps, moving towards the Logos, knowing that there would be shelter there. Food, warmth, salvation, escape. At least this time.

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Please review! 


	10. Chapter X: Theories

**Sydney Andrews **– That's a really neat theory. It makes sense, because in this situation you could say that Kiana is 'Neo' and Kes is 'Trinity'. It actually makes a lot of sense…which is why you're completely right. But no-one in the story finds that out for quite some time…so pretend you don't know, okay? ;) I think you're right, Kes is pretty hard, but she has lived a very dangerous life, and I kind of assumed that it had evolved from her difficult, and yeah, very military life. You're also right, it definitely rattles Trin and Neo – more about that in chapter 12! I'm glad you liked Kes' little insight, I think both Kes and Kiana have got some psychological issues that I am definitely going to play with. I'm callous, aren't I? Anyway, thanks for reviewing!

**Arhazivory **– Yeah, I think Kes is a lot more vulnerable than she lets on. I was trying to make that chapter pretty suspenseful – glad to know I had you wondering! Thanks for reviewing!

**Bagpipes5K2 **– Oh, you bet…Thanks for reviewing!

**scarstar** – Oh yes, I am the queen of sarcasm! Seriously. Thanks for reviewing!

**twiggie** – Thanks! I'm really glad you like this story, and thanks for reviewing!

I'm sorry that I didn't get the chance to update last week, but I think that will have to be a permanent arrangement**. From now on I will be updating this fic every other week.** I'm really sorry, but I think it has to be this way because I've only got one more chapter written after this one, and I've got my GCSEs in two months, so I need to be revising. I'm really sorry, but I think it has to be this way. If I ever get an epiphany and suddenly have a lot written in advance, I will of course update.

I don't know if I said this before, but I've got a new My Own Private Idaho story up, and if anyone's a fan, I'd love to hear from them.

Oh...a warning about some pointless language in this chapter. It's not totally unnecessary - I had to put one of the characters through a lot of pain for it!

As always, thanks to **Bagpipes** for betaing.

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**Chapter X: Theories**

The Logos wasn't that warm, but compared to the chill of the sewers, it felt like heaven to Kes. As soon as they were inside, and the doors were closed, Link asked the question that everyone had been thinking.

"So what was all that?"

"We blew the EMP" Ghost explained. "We saw the sentinels coming on the radar, and when we saw you, it was clear that there were far too many sentinels for you guys to sit down and blow your EMP, so we blew ours"

"And that's why we fell" Elysia stated baldly. "All our power went, so we plummeted like a stone"

"Better than having to deal with all those sentinels" Niobe said in her usual, sharp manner. "There were at least five thousand on your ass"

"That's impossible" Link said incredulously. "Why would there be five thousand sentinels just roaming the sewers? They never patrol in numbers that big"

"Unless they were sent" Morpheus added quietly. "They knew that we would be watching the Matrix, and how the code was changing, so they thought that we would not be watching for sentinels"

"Maybe they even thought we'd be Inside" Trinity said, with a glance at Niobe.

"You saw the mad, screwed-up code, right?" Sparks asked. "What do you think happened?"

"They're changing the foundation layers of the Matrix, but it doesn't read differently" Link recapped. "I'd say something really big is going on"

"What was it like Inside?" Elysia asked Niobe curiously. "And how did you get out?"

"Screwed up" she replied simply. "It reads normally but it doesn't feel right. And they either cut all the hardlines within a mile simultaneously or the code stopped reading exits. It was like it was rejecting all attempts at either infiltrating it or escaping it"

"Were there any Agents?" Morpheus asked.

She shook her head. "Nothing. Nada. It was eerily quiet"

"Good thing we ran into you. We were going to make a drop, giving you the minutes of the Zion meeting" Niobe glanced up at Morpheus. "I need to talk to you about that"

Kes' smashed nose chose that moment to ache painfully, and she knew that she needed to get some medical attention. "Can we hold off this conversation until I can breathe through my nose?" she asked. "Because I really want to know, but my face is covered in blood and I think I need to go to the med bay"

"Come on" said Elysia. "I can fix it"

_Really? _

That retort sprung to Kes' lips, bursting to break free, but she pressed her lips together and controlled the urge. After all, Elysia _was_ a decent medic. It just wasn't her natural occupation.

She caught her parents' eyes. She could see their dilemma; if they were going to discuss something, as crewmembers without any significant injuries they were theoretically meant to be there. Morpheus was a good captain, and an unorthodox one, but it was almost an unspoken rule on the ship that it would save a lot of trouble if everyone abided by the rules. Kes had never been involved in anything when she was aboard the Neb, but it was common knowledge that Lock would take any opportunity to get Morpheus kicked out. It was almost a game, the crew versus Lock – the objective being not to give him any reason to demote Morpheus.

"It's okay. I'll be fine" she said, trying to smile reassuringly at her parents, but since doing so let the dried blood that was caked on her face split, she figured she must look more terrifying than reassuring.

She got up and walked out towards the med bay, feeling a little apprehensive. What could actually be done to her nose? She had a little medical knowledge, but this nugget of information had slipped her mind. She hoped it didn't involve injections. For most pod-borns, injections could be administered via an IV line through one of their (numerous) plugs. For her, being freeborn, she had to have it delivered in an old-fashioned way directly under her skin. Given everything she'd seen and the fact that she knew the grizzly truth about the world when billions didn't, it seemed almost ironic that she was afraid of injections. She hoped it wouldn't be painful, anyway.

"Ow! Fuck!" Kes swore violently as her broken nose was set.

"Sorry, sorry" Elysia apologised. As part of her training, she had to use her uploaded medical knowledge in a practical situation, and resetting Kes' shattered nose was a perfect opportunity.

"It's okay" Kes said through gritted teeth. The bone and cartilage made a terrible noise that she could hear echoing right inside her skull, and it made Kes feel like she was either going to scream or vomit. She locked her jaw and swore to do neither.

"There, it's done"

Kes stood up. "Thanks. I owe you one" She gently ran her forefinger down the bridge of her nose. "Is it a different shape or something?"

"There's too much swelling to tell. I guess it's possible"

"I never thought I'd say this, but I'm rather attached to the old shape of my nose" Kes said lightly. "Anyway, thanks again"

"It's okay. Here" Elysia threw a strip of cloth at Kes. "Get the blood off your face, you look like something out of a Stephen King novel"

Kes' face was as blank as she felt – though that was partly down to her numbed nose and stitched lip. "What?"

"Oh, sorry. Never mind"

Kes turned and left the Logos' med bay as fast as she could, because at that moment she felt like punching something and she honestly didn't want to hurt herself anymore. She knew Elysia had just forgotten, most pod-borns did, but it pissed her off.

Instead of getting rid of her anger by violence, she forced herself to take a few deep breaths and wiped the dried blood off of her face as fast as possible. When she was sure that she looked alright, and her eyes stopped watering from her impromptu nose sculpturing session, she set off down the corridor, towards the mess hall of the Logos. Not that she was hungry – during her treatment, her stomach felt like it was prepared to reject all of the food she'd consumed over the past year – but as soon as everyone was patched up appropriately, Niobe wanted everyone to meet in there.

Kiana looked around. Morpheus and Niobe were talking at one end, and her mother was with Ghost, both of their expressions carefully blank. Her father was sitting at one side of the table, and she went over to join him, feeling conspicuous. The blood was rushing back into her nose, and it was hot as hell. It felt like she was blushing, though instead of feeling her whole face flush, she felt a concentrated area of her face positively blaze.

"Hey Dad" she said, trying to look more healthy than she felt. "Did I miss anything?"

"Not yet" her father replied. "Are you okay?"

"Let me put it this way; I'm in less pain than I was earlier" Kes responded quickly. "Though I probably wouldn't say that if you asked me ten minutes ago" She looked about the room, noticing the one absentee in particular. "Where's Kiana?" she asked.

"They left her in one of the cabins. She's fine, just concussed"

_Thank you, God. _

With no outward indication of the silent thanks she had just offered up, Kes nodded and sat next to Neo, and almost instantly she felt her father's comforting arm around her. Normally, she would have moved away slightly, just enough so that he would take the hint, not enough so that she would offend him. But now she sensed that this was as much for him as it was for her. Kes always felt as though her parents worried about her disproportionately, but after what had happened, she had to admit, she couldn't blame them. Also, though she felt very young and naïve saying so, at times like this, it felt good to have her parents being protective of her. It made her feel as though what had happened wouldn't happen again. It made her feel secure.

"Right, are we getting on with this?" Niobe asked in her own direct way. "All of this aside, there are some bigger problems"

"Bigger than the Matrix code restructuring?" Trinity asked in her quiet, but intent way.

In Niobe's left hand, she held a file – something Kes hadn't seen. She let it drop to the table and slide across its smooth surface so that it was almost exactly in the centre of the table. "Minutes from the Zion meeting" she said, keeping her tone neutral, though her eyes did flicker to Kes once. "Commander Lock didn't give away details, but he did hint that there has been some indications of something big coming"

"Big – how big?" Link asked.

Niobe shrugged. "No-one's saying anything official yet, but Lock did let on that they reckon the balance of power within the Matrix is shifting"

"What?" Elysia exclaimed. "What can that mean?"

"It could be nothing – or something. We've all got orders to stay at broadcast level, watch the code, and act normal"

"But wait, what evidence do they have?" Link asked curiously.

Niobe pointed to the file. "Transmissions from the Icarus and the Caduceus. They were at broadcast level when their codes went haywire. The Icarus lost two crewmembers who were trapped inside. Apparently the codes just froze them out, and by the time they got back in, Jet and Sphinx were dead"

"Mother of God" Kes heard Elysia barely breathe, the words coming out like a whisper.

Niobe took a pause before she continued. "There have been others too. Sightings of sentinels acting strangely, some are staying away from Zion, some are attacking it whenever they feel like it. Lock wants all the ships to dock at once to defend the city, but the Council overruled him, and so four ships are staying out" Niobe shook her head. "It's like bedlam. They know something's wrong – everyone knows it – but they don't know how to fix it. It's like the Matrix is rejecting us"

A second of silence followed after Niobe's speech, and it was a silence no-one was prepared to break. Kes looked around surreptitiously. Her father was outwardly relaxed, but she could feel the tenseness of his grip. Her mother was tight and drawn. Morpheus was, as ever, unreadable. Everyone seemed to be unwilling to continue this conversation, as if it was something they didn't want to know.

Morpheus finally broke the silence. "We cannot do anything about this until the Nebuchadnezzar is operational" he stated. "I suggest start work on it as soon as everyone is rested"

With the finality of his tone on the final syllables, it was clear that the meeting was over. Kes got to her feet with everyone else, but as she did so, a wave of tiredness overcame her, and her head swam. She hadn't realised until then how shattered she was.

She followed her parents out, and said goodnight to them, spontaneously giving each of them a hug. Kes wasn't always hyper-affectionate, but she knew that though they didn't show it, they were both shaken up by what had happened today. And though she found their protectiveness suffocating at times, she knew that today showed that they sometimes had cause. She also knew that it was divine intervention that had saved them today, and it was that very act – putting your trust in a higher being – that stopped her from biting her hands off instead of her nails every time they entered the Matrix. She'd learned to have faith. But that didn't mean that she didn't cherish these sorts of moments because a tiny part of her – okay, a large part of her – worried herself to death and sometimes couldn't sleep because her nightmares came back to haunt her. Kes tried to have faith and cherish the time that she had. But that wasn't always easy, and as she held on to her parents, trusting in them to protect her like they always had done, she suddenly felt very old and very tired.

Once she had broken away, Kes stumbled through the empty cabins – even though the Logos could take a crew of nine, it only took three to run it, and Niobe apparently preferred smaller crews – and collapsed, only thinking at the last minute that it would be far more sensible to collapse on her back to protect her sore nose. She performed a twist that would made a ballet dancer proud, and landed squarely on her back, looking up at the ceiling. It was scarily similar to her own room back on the Neb, but bigger. Her room on the Neb was just a shoebox compared to this.

_You know what they say, one ship's like another…_

Her eyelids were falling, and a sense of weariness descended upon Kes. She rested her head on her arm as she always did, but on her right arm, the burn which had been forgotten until now protested, and she gently rubbed it with her fingertips in the hopes of soothing the skin. When it felt vaguely human again, she switched arms, lay down and didn't remember falling to sleep.

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Please review! 


	11. Chapter XI: Potential

**LadyOfThieves** – I didn't even realise I'd put that in there! It must be my subconscious taking over again…And yeah, even if you read all the updates I don't think you'd know what was going on – this story's a real mind fuck ;)

**Sydney Andrews** – Yay, I'm inspirational! I loved that NeoKes moment, it was so much fun to write. The narration is so totally me, as one of my friends pointed out, because it's sarcastic and full of profanity ;) My theory on this is that Neo probably can blow up sentinels, but he's never had to touch the Source, because it's not the end yet…okay, I could very easily give away great chunks of my plot here. But yes, as far as everyone is concerned. Neo can't blow up sentinels. Yep, Smith is coming back, and there is an Oracle scene in the works, but it'll probably be in the epilogue. Sorry! And yeah, there are tons of parallels between Kiana and Neo, but no Kes and Kiana falling in love. That would be pretty bizarre…lol, I think I'm getting an idea for a parody…thanks for reviewing!

**scarstar** – Thanks! I put in the idea of the King novel because I'd just seen Carrie…and so I was a little grossed out. Glad to know it came off though. I'm really going to need some luck with my GCSEs – I think I might just have a mental breakdown. I'd probably still have to do them though…

**Bagpipes5K2** – I loved writing that bit :) I meant to send this chapter to you, but my server was being its usual useless self, and I didn't have email for a few days. Sorry! (offers apology cookies).

**someone who cares** – Thanks for reviewing!

Okay, this chapter's a little surreal, but bear with me, as it will become clear in later chapters. The next one will also be a little surreal, but less so. These two chapters are focusing on Kiana and Kes respectively, just to give you all some more background on them, and to develop them as characters a bit more.

Anyway, enjoy!

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**Chapter XI: Potential**

Kiana was floating.

Her mind felt free of the body that was weighing her down, and her spirit soared. She could feel every molecule of her being acutely, and yet her body, as a whole, felt lighter than ever before. Sensations came to her, sensations she hadn't felt since leaving the Matrix. Her body responded easily to these stimulations; her fingers twitched as a silken feather seemed to run lightly over them, and she cried out in pain as needles embedded themselves in her forearm. But even these sensations she welcomed as signs that she was still alive. Still human.

Then again, for all she knew, this could be heaven. Or hell. Or eternity. The last thing she remembered was the sentinel's red light beaming into her eyes, piercing through her whole skull. After that, there was a blessed coolness that had erased the fierce heat of the sentinel's lasers, and now, there was the blackness that engulfed her.

Though, there was still the glaring possibility that she was dead.

Kiana cried out, a cry of desperation, of someone searching for an answer. Her cry echoed into the void all around her. The blackness went on, without ending. Eternal. Undying. Infinite. It stretched around her, seemingly complete, but at the corner of her eye Kiana was sure she could see a sliver of whiteness. She turned, chasing it, but it seemed to vanish when she focused her whole attention on it.

A part of her burned to explore, to understand this place, but another part of her simply wanted to revel in this new freedom. Her whole body felt as though it was filled with unused potential, as though she could do anything she wanted to do. Arms stretched out wide, like bird's wings, she soared on the breeze of the void, letting her body do whatever it wanted to do. This felt like being in the Construct, only better. She could feel all sorts of forces running through the void, waiting to bend to her will. She could feel them all, waiting for her.

A frenetic energy seized her, as though she was in a competition. Ambition and the need to succeed overwhelmed her, and she ran forwards on the wind, poised to perform. Using her recently uploaded martial arts files, she had only to browse to find sufficient exercises for her newly weightless body.

She flipped, jumping up into the air and spiralling around to land perfectly on the ground. From there she leapt up again, her legs doing the splits and her arms at ninety degrees to them, again landing flawlessly and somersaulting to rest in a cat-like pose. On and on she pushed her body further and further, doing the hardest things she could think of, stuff she wouldn't have even thought of doing before.

Though Kiana's body responded quickly and simply to the merest thought, a part of her mind was still wondering what was happening. When she had been in the Construct with Morpheus, doing this sort of thing had felt hard and unnatural, as though she would have to retrain her mind, and therefore her virtual body into reacting so fast and doing so much. But now, as she made a perfect scorpion kick and brought her leg back to rest perfectly upright, it felt so easy. Like a reflex reaction.

Total silence filled the void once again. Kiana wasn't even breathing hard. But as she listened to the silence, she thought she could hear the faintest sound of applause.

"Thank you" she whispered to her invisible audience. Her words carried over the sea of the void, echoing into infinity.

A leadenness started to fill her limbs, starting with her fingers, killing all sensation in them. Kiana tried to move her arm, but it was so heavy, so heavy after the lightness of a few moments ago. Panic filled her limbs, and she didn't know what to do. So, with nothing to fight, she fled.

She ran on nothingness, her body moving as swiftly as she could make it. She tried to kid herself into thinking that she was moving as fast as ever, that she hadn't slowed down, but she knew with every step that the same leadenness was pouring into her legs. She desperately pushed herself, trying to find the end of the void, the glimpse of whiteness, anything to get her out of here. Someone else was controlling her now and she did not like that.

As she ran, her lungs about to burst, she suddenly tripped without cause, going over into the blackness. Suddenly, her feet balanced on what felt like a marble floor, the coldness seeping into her bones, but all she could see was a continuation of the void.

Kiana tried to stand, but the heaviness in her limbs was filling her to breaking point, and it became an effort to even breathe, let alone do anything else. Every part of her ached and she could hardly believe that a minute ago she had been soaring through the air, feeling as though there was nothing to constrain her anymore.

No.

The quiet voice rang in Kiana's head like a clear bell, but she didn't know where it came from. It almost felt like it came from within her.

Free your mind.

The words, the same ones Morpheus had spoken to her earlier, came back to her, but they didn't sound like they were spoken in Morpheus' voice.

Kiana held onto the words as their last vibration died away, but a sort of strength was awoken in her. She could feel the heaviness and bulk in her body start to dissipate, and tiny waves of sensation started to swarm up her body. Everything seemed to initiate a new feeling, and her head started to clear.

She began to run forwards again, slowly and ungainly at first, but with every movement a new life arose in her body. She soon ran swiftly and elegantly along the unseen marble of the void, ending with a back flip and landing in a fighting pose. She didn't know who was the other presence she felt within the void, but she knew that it wasn't a friendly one. She was starting to feel trapped, and a well of panic rose up within her. However, she calmed it down, forcing it beneath the skin, and held her pose, waiting for an answer to her unspoken challenge.

At last it came.

_Not bad. _

It was different from the voice she heard a moment ago, and whilst that voice had seemingly come from within her, she knew that this one came from the void around her.

Kiana raised an eyebrow. "Thanks a lot" she muttered sardonically. "Who are you?"

_Someone you will know. Soon. _

"Hopefully never" Kiana snapped, feeling an instant dislike to the smooth, oily voice she could hear. She didn't know where it was coming from, but it seemed to be all around her, an omnipresent force. "You didn't answer my question"

_Maybe you are asking the wrong question. _

"What a cop out" Kiana responded, not knowing why she felt such a need to defend herself against this entity. "Alright, answer me this: did you build this place?"

_I am…part of the system that governs this place. _

"Is this the Matrix?" Kiana asked. "Or just my subconscious?"

_Have you not entertained the idea that the Matrix is within your subconscious?_

"That's bull" she replied fiercely. "The Matrix isn't real"

_But for fifteen years you believed it was. How do you know this isn't the Matrix?_

Kiana, for once, was stumped for an answer. She racked her brain so hard trying to come up with a response that it was only later that she realised that the presence had said fifteen years instead of eighteen.

"Because I know" she said simply. "I can feel it"

There was a laugh, malicious, but almost familiar to Kiana. The thought disturbed her, but she knew deep within that she had heard that sound somewhere before. It was unnerving, like part of a long-buried memory, and she felt a shiver go up her spine as a response to the noise.

But when was the Matrix most real to you?

A breath caught in Kiana's throat as she realised what the presence was talking about. "Oh no" she breathed. "How do you–"

The memory began to play itself out in front of her eyes before she even had time to finish that thought.

_It was sunny on the day she was going to die. _

_Bright sunlight streamed through her window, throwing agonisingly dazzling and hopeful golden light across her dark room. With a decisive pull Cassandra jerked the curtains across the window, shutting all of the sunlight out. _

_This was it. _

_In one hour, at eleven in the morning, she would be seventeen. Seventeen. How could someone live for almost seventeen years and have found nothing in the world? Nothing. There was nothing for her here. She was sick and tired of wasted potential and the fact that there was nothing in the world for her except regret and pain. That was all she could look forward to in life now. _

_So, here she was. It was ten o'clock, on the thirteenth of September, and in one hour, she would be seventeen. To celebrate, she was sitting on her bed, with a bottle of the strongest pills she could find the house and a sharp knife, as well as a bottle of vodka – which she'd taken a sip of and then refused to have any more. It tasted too bland, and it dulled her senses. If this was the true reality of life, she wanted to feel every sensation possible. She wanted to get everything possible out of her death. Because that's all it was to her. A chance to feel something she'd never felt before. _

_This was as real as life got. Death. That was the reality of life. For the whole of her seventeen years, Cass had always felt like she'd been asleep. Every part of her life was ethereal, almost like a dream. But now, she was focused, she had a plan, and she felt more alive than ever. Which was incredibly ironic. _

_Nothing was going to make her change her mind about this. Nothing. _

_The whole place was quiet, almost deathly silent. Kiana knew that no-one was there, but she could feel something else…a sort of omnipresent force. She could feel it around her, every sense attuned to it. _

_Was it God? Or paranoia? _

"_Well God," she whispered, "if it's you, here's to the shit you've put me through. And here's to the fact I'll get to say it to your face soon" _

_A twisted smile crept over her face. Despite the blackness of her mission, she felt light hearted. There was a solution now. An answer. Something that she was sure of. _

_She'd never had this feeling before in her life. Never this. She'd never had an answer before in her life. Only indecision, and self-doubt. The whole world had made it their mission to tell her that she was always wrong, that she would never do anything right. She was going to prove them wrong. She was going to do something right, for once. One right action, one deed that was going to solve everything. One right action in seventeen years. That didn't seem fair. But life wasn't fair. Here was her chance to shorten the odds. _

_Sitting on the bed, cross-legged, she slowly tipped the pills out onto the blanket. They were small things, white and nondescript. Was there really the power to end a life in something so commonplace? She would certainly find out soon. _

_Cass ran some of them over in her hand. The feel of them on her skin made her tense up involuntarily. Did she want this? Truly? For the first time, she felt an inkling of self-doubt at her own plan. Couldn't she step back? Wasn't there another way out? Couldn't she live a little longer, and maybe find something, something worth living for? _

_There was no point. _

_Cassandra suddenly closed her fist, trapping the pills inside and digging her too-long fingernails into her palm. It wasn't fair. She'd never be able to come back from this. In a few minutes it would all be over. It wasn't fair. She should have been able to live like anyone else. She should have had the same chances as everyone else. But she knew she didn't. No-one else had a family like hers. No-one else had a mentality like hers. No-one knew what it was like to be her. _

_It had taken her every day of her life to try and convince the other people around her that she wasn't crazy. Every action of hers had prompted another round of questions, more tests and more treatments. And while Cass had protested her sanity at every possible point. But no-one believed her. Every time she tried to prove her own mentality in all its glorious normality, it had gone wrong and further enhanced the belief that she was mad. At seven she'd been diagnosed with schizophrenia – a tall order for a seven year old. But even Cassandra herself had admitted that she heard things, things that no-one else seemed to hear. And she could see things too. Every now and again, when she was in the city, she caught flashes of green, lines of it running through roads and skyscrapers, like the very structure of the city. But no-one else seemed to see them, and after a while they stopped listening every time she tried to tell them. _

_A tear began to well up in her eyes, and she dashed them away. There was no more crying, and there were no more lies. Those days were behind her. Though she still heard people talking that no-one else seemed to hear, and she still saw things that were invisible to everyone else, she had stopped talking about them, and her mother was happy to forget her daughter's period of insanity. So that was that. A whole part of her life swept under the carpet, and locked away because it was 'inconvenient'. It was a blot on her life, the fact that she could never trust her own judgement because no-one else could. It was a mind-fuck of a life. It wasn't fair. It simply wasn't fair. _

_Which was why she was here now. _

_Cass glanced at her watch; it was almost eleven. Good. Without anymore deliberation, she placed the delicate pills, warmed to the temperature of her blood from sitting in her palm, onto her tongue. They felt light and heady, almost sweet, but richer and darker than the word 'sweet' could ever describe. She swallowed them dry, almost enjoying the sensation of them going down her throat. _

_One more thing to do…_

_She took the knife in her hand, running it lightly over the tip of her forefinger. It was sharp enough, she could feel the steel edge through the thumb layer of skin over her digit. This was her insurance. If the pills didn't take her, the knife would. _

_She pressed it lightly to the underside of her wrist, feeling the pressure of the blood circulating in her veins. It was all so delicate, so pristine. And she was going to destroy it in order to destroy herself. _

_She moved the knife across her left wrist in one fluid, liquid motion. She could feel hot blood staining her hands, her bedclothes, but she didn't care. As the pressure of her blood dropped and a sickness settled in her stomach, she could only feel the heady rush of adrenaline, a promise of something different, if not better, awaiting her. _

_She lay back and closed her eyes, eagerly awaiting the embrace of the darkness. _

Kiana was on the cusp of shaking as the memory played out in front of her. Seeing her own emotions painted blandly out in such a remote, detached way was more than she could bear. It drew her right back into that moment, where she had no hope left and the only faith she had was faith in the next world, the next life, whatever lay beyond.

"That wasn't me" she whispered. "That was Cassandra. I'm Kiana. Kiana…" Her words sounded hollow, even to her, and they floated through the void like plastic bags caught in the wind, without substance.

She was suddenly shaking and couldn't stop. Everything seemed to overwhelm her at that moment, and for a second, it felt like she had lost control. Like her destiny had suddenly been taken out of her hands. She knew that feeling well. It felt like being back in the Matrix.

It was too late. She was lost.

Kiana floated backwards on a sea of unconsciousness. Her mind shut off as it overloaded with emotion. There was too much to handle, even in one memory. So she sank back and let exhaustion and oblivion take her.

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Please review! 


	12. Chapter XII: Dreams

**Sydney Andrews** – It really meant a lot to me that you liked the last chapter, because it was quite experimental (I'm forever playing with my writing style) but also, I was thinking of you when I wrote it, as you'd asked for some more information on Kiana's life, and that really inspired that chapter. So thank you again ;) Thanks for reviewing!

**Bagpipes5K2** – Kiana's definitely a bit of an enigma…thanks again for betaing this chapter (hands over cookies and Neo sunglasses)

**Starlite11** – Thanks! I hope I'm updating soon enough!

I'm going to take this moment to plug V for Vendetta. It really is a very good movie, and Hugo Weaving delivers a pretty outstanding performance, considering his performance is based entirely on voice and body language. I thought it was pretty fantastic, and I have a fic in the works which will be going up soon. So yeah…everyone go see it.

Also, if you like this fic, go read 'The Undiscovered Country' by **Sydney Andrews** because it rocks ;)

Thanks as always to **Bagpipes** for betaing ;)

Enjoy!

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**Chapter XI: Dreams**

Kes' eyes flew open, and she inhaled sharply as she sat up. She couldn't remember what had happened when she was asleep, but now, she was sitting up and gasping, like she'd been drowning. What was it?

Her breathing slowed, and she forced herself to stay still and quiet. She had no idea who was sleeping and who was awake on the ship, but she didn't want to wake any of the sleepers. Too many years of living as a ship as a ship kid had drilled that into her bones. And besides, right now the quiet and solitude of her room was inviting. After her dream, any sort of peace and normality seemed inviting.

She could have turned on the light, but she didn't, instead letting her eyes adjust to the darkness, and what before had seemed like incomprehensible oblivion turned into glowing silvery shapes. She could pick out the structure of walls and furniture, even though it was all in a different place. What had happened?

Oh right. She was on the Logos. She'd never realised how comforting it was to wake up and see the same old things, the same old walls before. It wasn't ever something that had crossed her mind. You never realised what you had until it wasn't there any more.

Kes' mind flickered back to the Nebuchadnezzar. After the involuntary descent and swarms of sentinels, it was probably that everything was in ruins. It would definitely take a lot of repair work, for sure, her pragmatic mind told her. But the other part of her psyche, the sentimental part that rarely made it to the surface, was still crying about what she might have lost. It wasn't like she had a lot of stuff – there wasn't very much to be had. But she still had her treasures, the things that mattered to her if no-one else. Little things that reminded her of the life she had led.

Her breathing was slower now, relaxed and calm, though her body was still tense, and her hands clutched involuntarily at the white sheet around her, as though they were afraid of letting go.

It had to be early in the morning, she summarised. After years on a ship, things like times and

She could only remember fragments of the dream, but it was still hanging off of her like a bad smell. It was all disjointed, and fading faster with every moment that she spent in the waking world, but the feelings and emotions were still there. They wouldn't leave her any time soon.

She was walking through one of the largest and emptiest places she had ever seen. Grand caverns reached upwards, seemingly endless, but they eventually met a roof, something to remind everyone that they were still practically underground. A long platform linked up the pattern of buildings and places on the floor, crossing a gaping chasm, and lifts ran between floors. Kes could pick out all the places she had walked in the past, all of the places she had been. Though it had been over six years since she had been here, she knew precisely where she was. This was Zion – almost exactly as she remembered it. Almost. Large was an adjective that could be used to describe it, but empty certainly wasn't. Where were all the people?

She walked across the platform, her footsteps sounding surprisingly loud in the emptiness of the chasm. Though it looked the same, she knew inside that it felt different. It wasn't just the loneliness, it was everything else – it all smelt of decay and neglect. She saw particles of dust and rock grains littered over everything as though no-one had disturbed it for years. It was totally abandoned.

Kes walked slowly, noting everything that she saw. She could even feel the difference as she breathed – the dust settled at the back of her throat, making her cough, and the air felt thinner. Of course, it stood to sense that if there were no people, there would be no-one to run the machinery that produced enough oxygen – the pressure was different down here from the surface. If Kes had lived her whole life in Zion, she probably have been more used to it. As it was, in the waking world, she couldn't even breathe in it. Now though, in the dream, it was even worse. It felt like someone was standing on her chest. Everything reeked of neglect and abandonment and rot to the point that she couldn't breathe.

Suddenly, amongst all of the decay and stillness, Kes saw something move. Instinctively she froze, looking on the floor for a weapon, something to defend herself with. She didn't know why, but she had a bad feeling. Like something big and unstoppable was about to happen.

Shadows and shapes swirled in front of her, obscured by dust. Everything seemed to shift through this fog, but Kes knew for sure that there was something in front of her, something living. The bad feeling was still sinking through her gut, and she tried to ignore it, focusing entirely on the task at hand.

The figure ahead of her turned around. At first Kes thought that there was a mirror or something there, because the figure seemed to be her height, with dark hair, like her. But as it turned, she could see how wrong she was. This person was skinnier than her, almost gaunt, and the hair, whilst it was the right colour, was shorter than hers. But the similarity of the face couldn't be ignored, with pale skin covering high cheekbones and strong features. It could have been Kes. But it wasn't.

It was Kiana.

Kes knew that, even with Kiana's new black hair, because something inside of her fell like a stone, confirming all of her suspicions.

And Kes knew that Kiana had done something. Because of the blood that was covering her hands, staining her clothes. There was blood on her hands. And, just as Kes knew that Kiana was responsible, she also knew what would happen because of her.

Someone would die because of her.

Kes could feel her anger, welling up within her at the sight of the blood, at the thought of a life erased by someone else, but also, a quiet fear gripped her heart. She wasn't sure where she was, whether she was asleep or awake, but that didn't stop her fear of death being very real.

A strange compulsion though, suddenly mounted within her. It was like curiosity and a swift understanding melded together, and Kes found it taking place of her fear. Without thinking, she reached out and grabbed Kiana's bloody hand.

Fire raced through her palm, and an acidic sensation burnt into her bones. Kes yanked her hand away, and, on impulse, looked up into Kiana's eyes, searching for an answer. But there were no eyes. Shadows gathered around her eyes sockets, and Kes couldn't make out any difference between the deep silhouette of her eye and her actual eyeballs. But what she could see were glistening tears, like diamonds ready to fall.

The pain was sublime, and even though some part of Kes knew that it was only a dream, she honestly thought that she might pass out. She could barely feel anything anymore except the pain in her arm and hand, and slowly the world around her, Zion, Kiana and the empty platform, slowly crumbled, shattering under her feet. Green code flew in front of her eyes, inscriptions that she could barely make out. It ran down like rain, rain under her eyelids. It was moving so fast that she could only make out a few concepts from the code: destruction…mystery…legacy…birth...

But there was one that stood out in front of her eyes, as though it was the one she was meant to see: twin. Twin. The word imprinted itself into her brain as though it was the greatest obscenity possible, and she couldn't ever forget it. It filled her mind, and she realised that she was falling.

It was at that point that she woke up, a scream that echoed in her ears, not her scream, but someone else's, and it was at once both new and familiar. Kes strained to hear it, to hold onto that note of anguish in the hope of identifying it, but sensation raced through her body, not ethereal feelings, but the reality of her waking life. She was awakening from the dream, and the scream was disappearing, falling into the void…

Jesus…Now, back in her room aboard the Logos, Kes took a deep breath of gratefulness and anxiety. She very rarely dreamed. Not unless it was something dark and traumatic and something that she could easily associate with her own life. She wasn't used to having strangely symbolic dreams that seemed to be omens of how screwed up her subconscious was. And usually she was too tired to think about anything other than sleep, let alone dream, and she practically never remembered them anyway. It was the most infuriating feeling; when she woke up, just on the cusp of remembering the dream, with emotions and images hanging off of her, and the dream simply slipped away into a discarded memory that she could no longer access. It was infuriating, but it was better than remembering a dream that scared her out of her wits.

New pain racked through her arm. The burn was rubbing against the sheet, sending sparks of pain down her arm, into her hand. Kes rubbed it thoughtfully. That was the acidic pain in the dream, the searing blood. Still, it had felt so real…

Kes closed her eyes, trying to block the images from her mind, but to no avail. She couldn't even convince herself that it was meaningless, because in her heart of hearts, she knew better. Ever since that blood test, she'd known the truth, and though she'd tried to pretend otherwise, she couldn't hide it from herself much longer.

If Kiana was a match for her and her parents, she had to be related to her. It was as simple as that. The probability of a mistake was tiny, and Kes knew it. She hadn't got the heart to delude herself anyway. It was all so dark and confused and mixed-up that she felt like she would never feel straightened out again.

The worst part was, she couldn't even tell anyone. She couldn't tell Kiana, she had no idea of what was going on in Kes' head. She couldn't tell Morpheus or anyone, because that would definitely make her sound crazy. She certainly couldn't tell her parents – well, she could, but she wouldn't. It was too much to drop on them, too much for anyone to try and comprehend. Kes wasn't even sure she understood it, but she knew the core of the truth; Kiana was her sister. There was no doubt about it. There was only the how and the why to contend with now.

Kes had the feeling that there was something she had forgotten, or overlooked, but she couldn't place it. And it was too early in the morning and there was too much else for her to worry about for her to put any great cognitive power into figuring out what she'd forgotten.

The problem was, she had no idea how to contend with it. She wouldn't be able to investigate any further without someone else finding out, and then there would be hell to pay. She knew that she couldn't keep this a secret forever, but she had no idea how to explain this to everyone. And her brush with death and the death of those she cared about not twelve hours ago had made her long for security, the sort she used to have when she was a kid. The simple, child-like naiveté that everything would be alright, that all danger and uncertainty was temporary. But she was fifteen, and way too old to even pretend to hang onto that sort of innocence. She had to deal with this, because no-one else would.

It was all too much. Kes put her hot head down on her cool hands and closed her eyes, hoping for dreamless sleep.

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